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Response time variability

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Abstract

Response time variability is a new optimization problem with a broad range of applications and a distinctive number of theoretic flavour. The problem occurs whenever events, jobs, clients or products need to be sequenced so as to minimize the variability of time for which they wait for the next turn in obtaining the resources necessary for their advance. The problem has numerous real-life applications. We study its computational complexity, present efficiency, polynomial time algorithms for some cases, and the NP-hardness proof for a general problem. We propose a position exchange heuristic and apply it to improve the total response time variability of an initial sequence. The latter is the optimum bottleneck sequence, Webster or Jefferson sequence of the apportionment, or a random sequence. We report on computational experiments with the heuristic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Industrial and Control Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

    Albert Corominas

  2. Faculty of Business Administration, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Canada

    Wieslaw Kubiak & Natalia Moreno Palli

Authors
  1. Albert Corominas
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  2. Wieslaw Kubiak
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  3. Natalia Moreno Palli
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Corominas, A., Kubiak, W. & Palli, N.M. Response time variability. J Sched 10, 97–110 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10951-006-0002-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10951-006-0002-8

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