Application of an optimization problem in Max-Plus algebra to scheduling problems Original Research Article

The problem tackled in this paper deals with products of a finite number of triangular matrices in Max-Plus algebra, and more precisely with an optimization problem related to the product order. We propose a polynomial time optimization algorithm for image matrices products. We show that the problem under consideration generalizes numerous scheduling problems, like single machine problems or two-machine flow shop problems. Then, we show that for image matrices, the problem is NP-hard and we propose a branch-and-bound algorithm, lower bounds and upper bounds to solve it. We show that an important number of results in the literature can be obtained by solving the presented problem, which is a generalization of single machine problems, two- and three-machine flow shop scheduling problems. The branch-and-bound algorithm is tested in the general case and for a particular case and some computational experiments are presented and discussed.