Showing papers by "Rolf H. Möhring published in 1985"

Algorithmic Aspects of Comparability Graphs and Interval Graphs

Abstract: Comparability graphs are undirected graphs that represent the comparability relation of partial orders. They constitute an important interface between graphs and partial orders both for theoretical investigations on their structural properties, and the development of efficient algorithmic methods for otherwise NP-hard combinatorial (optimization) problems on partial orders and their comparability graphs.

Algorithmic aspects of the substitution decomposition in optimization over relations, set systems and Boolean functions

Abstract: In the last years, decomposition techniques have seen an increasing application to the solution of problems from operations research and combinatorial optimization, in particular in network theory and graph theory. This paper gives a broad treatment of a particular aspect of this approach, viz. the design of algorithms to compute the decomposition possibilities for a large class of discrete structures. The decomposition considered is thesubstitution decomposition (also known as modular decomposition, disjunctive decomposition, X-join or ordinal sum). Under rather general assumptions on the type of structure considered, these (possibly exponentially many) decomposition possibilities can be appropriately represented in acomposition tree of polynomial size. The task of determining this tree is shown to be polynomially equivalent to the seemingly weaker task of determining the closed hull of a given set w.r.t. a closure operation associated with the substitution decomposition. Based on this reduction, we show that for arbitrary relations the composition tree can be constructed in polynomial time. For clutters and monotonic Boolean functions, this task of constructing the closed hull is shown to be Turing-reducible to the problem of determining the circuits of the independence system associated with the clutter or the prime implicants of the Boolean function. This leads to polynomial algorithms for special clutters or monotonic Boolean functions. However, these results seem not to be extendable to the general case, as we derive exponential lower bounds for oracle decomposition algorithms for arbitrary set systems and Boolean functions.

Stochastic scheduling problems II-set strategies-

Abstract: The paper introduces the finite class of set strategies for stochastic scheduling problems. It is shown that the knownstable classes of strategies such as ES and MES strategies are of this type, as arelist-scheduling strategies such as LEPT and SEPT and other, more complicatedpriority-type strategies. Roughly speaking, set strategies are characterized by the fact that the decision as to which jobs should be started at timet depends only on the knowledge of the two sets of jobs finished up to timet and being processed at timet. Contrary to list scheduling strategies, set strategies may involve deliberate idleness of machines, i.e. may not be greedy and can therefore not generally be induced by priority rules. It is demonstrated that set strategies have useful properties. They are e.g.λ n -almost everywhere continuous and therefore show satisfactorystability behaviour w.r.t. weak convergence of the joint distribution of job durations. Furthermore, the optimum w.r.t.all strategies is already attained on this class if job durations are independent and exponentially distributed and the performance measure fulfills a certainshift condition. This shift property is a quite natural concept and generalizes aspects of the notion ofadditivity in semi-Markov decision theory and stochastic dynamic optimization. Its complete analytical characterization is a major object of this paper. Typical additive cost criteria such as makespan and flowtime are of course covered, which yields simultaneously a first step towards generalization of optimality of LEPT and SEPT rules, as known for special cases. In fact, in view of the obtained optimality result, the question of when deliberate idleness of machines can be avoided, gains considerable interest, as it characterizes stochastic environments in whichpriority strategies are optimal. This provides a major link with current research on the analysis of networks of queues in the context of computer systems.

Introduction to Stochastic Scheduling Problems

Abstract: The paper gives an introduction to some recent developments in stochastic scheduling, covering quite general nonpreemptive models. The approach is mainly intuitive, using a lot of illustrative examples and referring to other papers for proofs. Subjects treated are the characterization of all existing strategies, the identification of interesting subclasses of strategies, results on the optimality, stability and monotonicity behaviour and, finally, insights into the special nature of exponential models, for which hints to some basic open questions are also included.