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On the Asymptotic Optimality of the SPT Rule for the Flow Shop Average Completion Time Problem

Author

Listed:
  • Cathy H. Xia

    (IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, PO Box 704, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598)

  • George J. Shanthikumar

    (Department of IEOR and the Walter A. Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720)

  • Peter W. Glynn

    (Department of EES & OR, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305)

Abstract

Consider a flow shop with M machines in series, through which a set of jobs are to be processed. All jobs have the same routing, and they have to be processed in the same order on each of the machines. The objective is to determine such an order of the jobs, often referred to as a permutation schedule, so as to minimize the total completion time of all jobs on the final machine. We show that when the processing times are statistically exchangeable across machines and independent across jobs, the Shortest ProcessingTime first (SPT) scheduling rule, based on the total service requirement of each job on all M machines, is asymptotically optimal as the total number of jobs goes to infinity. This extends a recent result of Kaminsky and Simchi-Levi (1996), in which a crucial assumption is that the processing times on all M machines for all jobs must be i.i.d.. Our work provides an alternative proof using martingales, which can also be carried out directly to show the asymptotic optimality of the weighted SPT rule for the Flow Shop Weighted Completion Time Problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Cathy H. Xia & George J. Shanthikumar & Peter W. Glynn, 2000. "On the Asymptotic Optimality of the SPT Rule for the Flow Shop Average Completion Time Problem," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 48(4), pages 615-622, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:48:y:2000:i:4:p:615-622
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.48.4.615.12423
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Frederick S. Hillier & Ronald W. Boling, 1979. "On the Optimal Allocation of Work in Symmetrically Unbalanced Production Line Systems with Variable Operation Times," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(8), pages 721-728, August.
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    5. J. George Shanthikumar & Susan H. Xu, 1997. "Asymptotically Optimal Routing and Servive Rate Allocation in a Multiserver Queueing System," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 45(3), pages 464-469, June.
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. D Bai & L Tang, 2010. "New heuristics for flow shop problem to minimize makespan," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 61(6), pages 1032-1040, June.
    2. Mabel C. Chou & Hui Liu & Maurice Queyranne & David Simchi-Levi, 2006. "On the Asymptotic Optimality of a Simple On-Line Algorithm for the Stochastic Single-Machine Weighted Completion Time Problem and Its Extensions," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 54(3), pages 464-474, June.
    3. Kaminsky, Philip & Kaya, Onur, 2008. "Inventory positioning, scheduling and lead-time quotation in supply chains," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 276-293, July.
    4. Hui Liu & Maurice Queyranne & David Simchi‐Levi, 2005. "On the asymptotic optimality of algorithms for the flow shop problem with release dates," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(3), pages 232-242, April.
    5. Bai, Danyu & Tang, Mengqian & Zhang, Zhi-Hai & Santibanez-Gonzalez, Ernesto DR, 2018. "Flow shop learning effect scheduling problem with release dates," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 21-38.
    6. Nasini, Stefano & Nessah, Rabia, 2021. "An almost exact solution to the min completion time variance in a single machine," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 294(2), pages 427-441.
    7. Philip Kaminsky & Onur Kaya, 2008. "Scheduling and due‐date quotation in a make‐to‐order supply chain," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(5), pages 444-458, August.

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