General approximation schemes for min–max (regret) versions of some (pseudo-)polynomial problems

Abstract

While the complexity of min–max and min–max regret versions of most classical combinatorial optimization problems has been thoroughly investigated, there are very few studies about their approximation. For a bounded number of scenarios, we establish general approximation schemes which can be used for min–max and min–max regret versions of some polynomial or pseudo-polynomial problems. Applying these schemes to shortest path, minimum spanning tree, minimum weighted perfect matching on planar graphs, and knapsack problems, we obtain fully polynomial-time approximation schemes with better running times than the ones previously presented in the literature.