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Stochastic Scheduling

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Algorithms

  • 79 Accesses

Years and Authors of Summarized Original Work

  • 2001; Glazebrook, Nino-Mora

Problem Definition

Scheduling is concerned with the allocation of scarce resources (such as machines or servers) to competing activities (such as jobs or customers) over time. The distinguishing feature of a stochastic scheduling problem is that some of the relevant data are modeled as random variables, whose distributions are known, but whose actual realizations are not. Stochastic scheduling problems inherit several characteristics of their deterministic counterparts. In particular, there are virtually an unlimited number of problem types depending on the machine environment (single machine, parallel machines, job shops, flow shops), processing characteristics (preemptive versus nonpreemptive, batch scheduling versus allowing jobs to arrive “over time,” due dates, deadlines), and objectives (makespan, weighted completion time, weighted flow time, weighted tardiness). Furthermore, stochastic scheduling models...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Jay Sethuraman

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  1. Jay Sethuraman
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jay Sethuraman .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Ming-Yang Kao

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Sethuraman, J. (2016). Stochastic Scheduling. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2864-4_404

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