An Improved Formulation for the Job-Shop Scheduling Problem

Abstract

This paper presents an extension of an earlier integer programming model developed by other authors to formulate a general n-job, m-machine job-shop problem. The new formulation involves substantially fewer functional constraints at the expense of an increase in the number of upper bound variables. This reduction of functional constraints, together with the imposition of upper and lower bounds on the objective value, significantly reduces the computation time for solving the integer model for the job-shop scheduling problem.