Generalizing Horn's conditions for preemptive scheduling on identical parallel machines via network flow techniques

Abstract

We study the use of flow‐based algorithmic and proof techniques applied to preemptive scheduling of jobs on parallel identical machines. For the classical problem in which the jobs have individual release dates and must be finished by a common deadline, we present and prove unified necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a feasible schedule by examining the structure of minimum cuts in a special network. We then study an enhanced model that allows the presence of additional resources, provided that some jobs at any time of their processing require one unit of a particular resource. We extend our argument developed for the classical case to this enhanced model. The generalized necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a feasible schedule are presented and proved using the max‐flow/min‐cut reasoning.