Problem formulation

Abstract

As announced in chapter 1, this chapter deals with various aspects of problem formulation. In section 2.1 we discuss problem representations, including the important disjunctive graph model, and introduce notations to designate several concepts involving jobs, machines and operations. Whatever the interpretation of such concepts may be, several conditions have to be fulfilled before scheduling theory and algorithms can be applied; such restrictive assumptions are examined in section 2.2. The choice of optimality criteria will be discussed in section 2.3. Finally, in section 2.4 we combine previous notations to arrive at a classification of scheduling problems that determines to a large extent the structure of later chapters.