Using aggregation to reduce response time variability in cyclic fair sequences

作者：Herrmann Jeffrey W^*

来源：Journal of Scheduling, 2011, 14(1): 39-55.

DOI：10.1007/s10951-009-0127-7

• Response time variability
• Fair sequences
• Aggregation

Fair sequences are useful in a variety of applications, including manufacturing and computer systems. This paper considers the generation of cyclic fair sequences for a given set of products, each of which must be produced multiple times in each cycle. The objective is to create a sequence so that, for each product, the variability of the time between consecutive completions is minimized. Because minimizing response time variability is known to be NP-hard and the performance of existing heuristics is poor for certain classes of problems, we present an aggregation approach that combines products with the same demand, creates a sequence for the aggregated instance, and then disaggregates this solution into a feasible sequence for the original instance. Computational experiments show that using aggregation can reduce response time variability dramatically and also reduces computational effort.

• 出版日期2011-2