English

Approximate Deadline-Scheduling with Precedence Constraints

Data Structures and Algorithms 2015-07-06 v1

Abstract

We consider the classic problem of scheduling a set of n jobs non-preemptively on a single machine. Each job j has non-negative processing time, weight, and deadline, and a feasible schedule needs to be consistent with chain-like precedence constraints. The goal is to compute a feasible schedule that minimizes the sum of penalties of late jobs. Lenstra and Rinnoy Kan [Annals of Disc. Math., 1977] in their seminal work introduced this problem and showed that it is strongly NP-hard, even when all processing times and weights are 1. We study the approximability of the problem and our main result is an O(log k)-approximation algorithm for instances with k distinct job deadlines.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1507.00748,
  title  = {Approximate Deadline-Scheduling with Precedence Constraints},
  author = {Hossein Efsandiari and MohammadTaghi Hajiaghyi and Jochen Koenemann and Hamid Mahini and David Malec and Laura Sanita},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.00748},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T10:04:54.802Z