Using two-machine flowshop with maximum lateness objective to model multimedia data objects scheduling problem for WWW applications

Abstract

The multimedia data objects scheduling problem for WWW applications is modeled using the two-machine flowshop problem of minimizing maximum lateness with separate setup times. We establish three dominance relations, and propose four heuristics. Also, we conduct computational experiments to compare the performance of the proposed heuristics and that of existing ones in the literature. The results of the computational experiments show that the proposed heuristics are quite efficient. Scope and purpose A two-machine flowshop scheduling problem involves scheduling a number of jobs on the machines in order to optimize a given criterion. The majority of research assumes that setup times are negligible or can be combined with the processing times. However, the latter assumption is invalid since it may lead to more idle time on the second machine. In the literature, the separate setup times problem has been mainly addressed with the completion-time-related objective functions such as makespan. However, there are many real-life situations in which a due-date-related objective function such as maximum lateness is more appropriate. The problem with maximum lateness objective has received limited attention from researchers as indicated by a recent survey paper. In this paper, we show a real-life situation in the Internet where the two-machine flowshop problem of minimizing maximum lateness with separate setup times can be used to model the multimedia object scheduling problem. We propose new improved heuristics for this problem and compare with existing ones in the literature.