An On-line Supply Chain Scheduling Problem with a Constraint of Unavailability on the Machine

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we focus on a scheduling problem in the on-line environment, in which the number of jobs and all information of every job, such as release time, processing time etc. are not known before each job is released. After a job is released, it can be first manufactured on one machine in a factory. It is noted that there is a given constraint of unavailability on the machine. There may be some job interrupted by the determinate unavailability interval during its process of manufacturing, and the interrupted job must be reprocessed after the machine becomes available again. In order to take full advantage of the unlimited capacity of a vehicle, the completed jobs can be delivered in batches to the customer. Our goal is to minimize the maximum arrival time of the vehicle when the vehicle returns to the factory after it has delivered the last completed job to the customer. The lower bound is proved when we construct a series of intractable instances. And an on-line algorithm for the problem is then developed and the competitive analysis is performed.