SCHEDULING WITH DISCRETELY COMPRESSIBLE RELEASE DATES TO MINIMIZE MAKESPAN

Abstract

In this paper, we address the scheduling model with discretely compressible release dates, where processing any job with a compressed release date incurs a corresponding compression cost. We consider the following problem for the first time: scheduling with discretely compressible release dates to minimize the sum of makespan plus total compression cost. We show its NP-hardness, and design an approximation algorithm with worst-case performance ratio 2, which is the best possible if the processing order of the jobs is pre-specified.