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Fast approximation algorithms to minimize a special weighted flow-time criterion on a single machine with a non-availability interval and release dates

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Abstract

This paper is the first attempt to successfully design efficient approximation algorithms for the single-machine weighted flow-time minimization problem when jobs have different release dates and weights equal to their processing times under the assumption that one job is fixed (i.e., the machine is unavailable during a fixed interval corresponding to the fixed job). Our work is motivated by an interesting algorithmic application to the generation of valid inequalities in a branch-and-cut method. Our analysis shows that the trivial FIFO sequence can lead to an arbitrary large worst-case performance bound. Hence, we modify this sequence so that a new 2-approximation solution can be obtained for every instance and we prove the tightness of this bound. Then, we propose a fully polynomial-time approximation algorithm with efficient running time for the considered problem. Especially, the complexity of our algorithm is strongly polynomial.

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Correspondence to Imed Kacem.

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Kacem, I., Kellerer, H. Fast approximation algorithms to minimize a special weighted flow-time criterion on a single machine with a non-availability interval and release dates. J Sched 14, 257–265 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10951-009-0146-4

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