Chapter 8

Multiagent Scheduling Problems

Alessandro Agnetis

Department of Information Engineering, University of Siena, 53100 Siena, Italy, agnetis@dii.unisi.it

Abstract

Most classical scheduling problems and models describe situations in which a single decision maker has to compute the best way to arrange jobs and resources over time. In this tutorial we deal with multiagent scheduling problems, in which a number of distinct agents, each owning a subset of all jobs, share common processing resources. The analysis in this case focuses on finding efficient and, possibly, fair solutions. After presenting some motivation, we review basic issues, illustrate the main complexity results, discuss related problems, and point out future research needs.

Key words: machine scheduling; complexity; multiobjective scheduling; Pareto optimality

The 2012 volume of the TutORials in Operations Research series will be available to people who have registered for the 2012 INFORMS Annual Meeting. All INFORMS members will be able to access TutORials after January 1, 2013. Printed TutORials books from this and previous years can also be ordered here, along with CDs from 2005 to 2009.

Download Chapter 8 - Password-protected content.

For login instructions click here.

________________________________________________

Citation information:

Agnetis, A. Multiagent Scheduling Problems. P.Mirchandani, ed. INFORMS TutORials in Operations Research, Vol. 9. INFORMS, Hanover, MD, pp. 151--170.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/educ.1120.0096