The travelling salesman problem asks the following question: "Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each city exactly once and returns to the origin city?" It is an NP-hard problem in combinatorial optimization, important in theoretical computer science and operations research.
A greedy algorithm is any algorithm that follows the problem-solving heuristic of making the locally optimal choice at each stage. In many problems, a greedy strategy does not produce an optimal solution, but a greedy heuristic can yield locally optimal solutions that approximate a globally optimal solution in a reasonable amount of time.
A* is a graph traversal and path search algorithm, which is used in many fields of computer science due to its completeness, optimality, and optimal efficiency. One major practical drawback is its space complexity, as it stores all generated nodes in memory. Thus, in practical travel-routing systems, it is generally outperformed by algorithms which can pre-process the graph to attain better performance, as well as memory-bounded approaches; however, A* is still the best solution in many cases.
The Bottleneck traveling salesman problem is a problem in discrete or combinatorial optimization. The problem is to find the Hamiltonian cycle in a weighted graph which minimizes the weight of the highest-weight edge of the cycle. It was first formulated by Gilmore & Gomory (1964) with some additional constraints, and in its full generality by Garfinkel & Gilbert (1978).
In computer science, a topological sort or topological ordering of a directed graph is a linear ordering of its vertices such that for every directed edge uv from vertex u to vertex v, u comes before v in the ordering. For instance, the vertices of the graph may represent tasks to be performed, and the edges may represent constraints that one task must be performed before another; in this application, a topological ordering is just a valid sequence for the tasks. Precisely, a topological sort is a graph traversal in which each node v is visited only after all its dependencies are visited. A topological ordering is possible if and only if the graph has no directed cycles, that is, if it is a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Any DAG has at least one topological ordering, and algorithms are known for constructing a topological ordering of any DAG in linear time. Topological sorting has many applications especially in ranking problems such as feedback arc set. Topological sorting is possible even when the DAG has disconnected components.
Process optimization is the discipline of adjusting a process so as to optimize some specified set of parameters without violating some constraint. The most common goals are minimizing cost and maximizing throughput and/or efficiency. This is one of the major quantitative tools in industrial decision making.
Single-machine scheduling or single-resource scheduling is an optimization problem in computer science and operations research. We are given n jobs J1, J2, ..., Jn of varying processing times, which need to be scheduled on a single machine, in a way that optimizes a certain objective, such as the throughput.
Critical Chain is a novel by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt using the critical chain theory of project management as the major theme. It is really a teaching method for the theory.
Optimal job scheduling is a class of optimization problems related to scheduling. The inputs to such problems are a list of jobs and a list of machines. The required output is a schedule – an assignment of jobs to machines. The schedule should optimize a certain objective function. In the literature, problems of optimal job scheduling are often called machine scheduling, processor scheduling, multiprocessor scheduling, or just scheduling.
In operations research, Johnson's rule is a method of scheduling jobs in two work centers. Its primary objective is to find an optimal sequence of jobs to reduce makespan. It also reduces the amount of idle time between the two work centers. The method minimizes the makespan in the case of two work centers. Furthermore, the method finds the shortest makespan in the case of three work centers if additional constraints are met.
The genetic algorithm is an operational research method that may be used to solve scheduling problems in production planning.
Job-shop scheduling, the job-shop problem (JSP) or job-shop scheduling problem (JSSP) is an optimization problem in computer science and operations research. It is a variant of optimal job scheduling. In a general job scheduling problem, we are given n jobs J1, J2, ..., Jn of varying processing times, which need to be scheduled on m machines with varying processing power, while trying to minimize the makespan – the total length of the schedule. In the specific variant known as job-shop scheduling, each job consists of a set of operationsO1, O2, ..., On which need to be processed in a specific order. Each operation has a specific machine that it needs to be processed on and only one operation in a job can be processed at a given time. A common relaxation is the flexible job shop, where each operation can be processed on any machine of a given set.
In graph theory and combinatorial optimization, a closure of a directed graph is a set of vertices C, such that no edges leave C. The closure problem is the task of finding the maximum-weight or minimum-weight closure in a vertex-weighted directed graph. It may be solved in polynomial time using a reduction to the maximum flow problem. It may be used to model various application problems of choosing an optimal subset of tasks to perform, with dependencies between pairs of tasks, one example being in open pit mining.
Flow-shop scheduling is an optimization problem in computer science and operations research. It is a variant of optimal job scheduling. In a general job-scheduling problem, we are given n jobs J1, J2, ..., Jn of varying processing times, which need to be scheduled on m machines with varying processing power, while trying to minimize the makespan – the total length of the schedule. In the specific variant known as flow-shop scheduling, each job contains exactly m operations. The i-th operation of the job must be executed on the i-th machine. No machine can perform more than one operation simultaneously. For each operation of each job, execution time is specified.
Open-shop scheduling or open-shop scheduling problem (OSSP) is an optimization problem in computer science and operations research. It is a variant of optimal job scheduling. In a general job-scheduling problem, we are given n jobs J1, J2, ..., Jn of varying processing times, which need to be scheduled on m machines with varying processing power, while trying to minimize the makespan - the total length of the schedule. In the specific variant known as open-shop scheduling, each job consists of a set of operationsO1, O2, ..., On which need to be processed in an arbitrary order. The problem was first studied by Teofilo F. Gonzalez and Sartaj Sahni in 1976.
In job shop scheduling and graph drawing, the Coffman–Graham algorithm is an algorithm, named after Edward G. Coffman, Jr. and Ronald Graham, for arranging the elements of a partially ordered set into a sequence of levels. The algorithm chooses an arrangement such that an element that comes after another in the order is assigned to a lower level, and such that each level has a number of elements that does not exceed a fixed width bound W. When W = 2, it uses the minimum possible number of distinct levels, and in general it uses at most 2 − 2/W times as many levels as necessary.
In graph algorithms, the widest path problem is the problem of finding a path between two designated vertices in a weighted graph, maximizing the weight of the minimum-weight edge in the path. The widest path problem is also known as the maximum capacity path problem. It is possible to adapt most shortest path algorithms to compute widest paths, by modifying them to use the bottleneck distance instead of path length. However, in many cases even faster algorithms are possible.
In the mathematical modeling of job shop scheduling problems, disjunctive graphs are a way of modeling a system of tasks to be scheduled and timing constraints that must be respected by the schedule. They are mixed graphs, in which vertices may be connected by both directed and undirected edges. The two types of edges represent constraints of two different types:
Pinedo, Michael. Planning and Scheduling in Manufacturing and Services. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2005. Pages 87–93. ISBN 978-0-387-22198-4.
