Ilya Chernykh | Searcharxiv

arXiv2020

A polynomial-time algorithm for the routing flow shop problem with two machines: an asymmetric network with a fixed number of nodes

We consider the routing flow shop problem with two machines on an asymmetric network. For this problem we discuss properties of an optimal schedule and present a polynomial time algorithm assuming the number of nodes of the network to be bounded by a constant. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first positive result on the complexity of the routing flow shop problem with an arbitrary structure of the transportation network, even in the case of a symmetric network. This result stands in contrast with the complexity of the two-machine routing open shop problem, which was shown to be NP-hard even on the two-node network.

cs.DM↗

arXiv2019

Two-machine routing open shop on a tree: instance reduction and efficiently solvable subclass

We consider two-machine routing open shop problem on a tree. In this problem a transportation network with a tree-like structure is given, and each node contains some jobs to be processed by two mobile machines. Machines are initially located in the predefined node called the depot, have to traverse the network to perform their operations on each job (and each job has to be processed by both machines in arbitrary order), and machines have to return to the depot after performing all the operations. The goal is to construct a feasible schedule for machines to process all the jobs and to return to the depot in shortest time possible. This problem is known to be NP-hard even in the case when the transportation network consists of just two nodes. We propose an instance reduction procedure which allows to transform any instance of the problem to a simplified instance on a chain with limited number of jobs. The reduction considered preserves the standard lower bound on the optimum. We describe four possible outcomes of this procedure and prove that in three of them the initial instance can be solved to the optimum in linear time, thus introducing a wide polynomially solvable subclass of the problem considered. Our research can be used as a foundation to construct efficient approximation algorithms for the two-machine routing open shop on a tree.

cs.CC↗