Rescheduling unrelated parallel machines with total flow time and total disruption cost criteria

In this paper, we consider a rescheduling problem where a set of jobs has already been assigned to unrelated parallel machines. When a disruption occurs on one of the machines, the affected jobs are rescheduled, considering the efficiency and the schedule deviation measures. The efficiency measure is the total flow time, and the schedule deviation measure is the total disruption cost caused by the differences between the initial and current schedules. We provide polynomial-time solution methods to the following hierarchical optimization problems: minimizing total disruption cost among the minimum total flow time schedules and minimizing total flow time among the minimum total disruption cost schedules. We propose exponential-time algorithms to generate all efficient solutions and to minimize a specified function of the measures. Our extensive computational tests on large size problem instances have revealed that our optimization algorithm finds the best solution by generating only a small portion of all efficient solutions. Journal of the Operational Research Society (2011) 62, 152-164. doi:10.1057/jors.2009.157 Published online 3 February 2010