Parallel machine scheduling with eligibility constraints: A composite dispatching rule to minimize total weighted tardiness
研究机器资格约束下的并行机调度问题，提出两阶段启发式算法，其中第二阶段的新复合调度规则ATCF能显著降低总加权延误，尤其适用于工期宽松的场景，并用中国某医院的实际数据验证了效果。
We study a parallel machine scheduling problem, where a job j can only be processed on a specific subset of machines Mj, and the Mj subsets of the n jobs are nested. We develop a two-phase heuristic for minimizing the total weighted tardiness subject to the machine eligibility constraints. In the first phase, we compute the factors and statistics that characterize a problem instance. In the second phase, we propose a new composite dispatching rule, the Apparent Tardiness Cost with Flexibility considerations (ATCF) rule, which is governed by several scaling parameters of which the values are determined by the factors obtained in the first phase. The ATCF rule is a generalization of the well-known ATC rule which is very widely used in practice. We further discuss how to improve the dispatching rule using some simple but powerful properties without requiring additional computation time, and the improvement is quite satisfactory. We apply the Sequential Uniform Design Method to design our experiments and conduct an extensive computational study, and we perform tests on the performance of the ATCF rule using a real data set from a large hospital in China. We further compare its performance with that of the classical ATC rule. We also compare the schedules improved by the ATCF rule with what we believe are Near Optimal schedules generated by a general search procedure. The computational results show that especially with a low due date tightness, the ATCF rule performs significantly better than the well-known ATC rule generating much improved schedules that are close to the Near Optimal schedules. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 64: 249–267, 2017