Journal of the Operations Research Society of China ›› 2026, Vol. 14 ›› Issue (2): 653-670.doi: 10.1007/s40305-024-00552-1

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Single-Machine Online Scheduling with Non-delayed Processing Constraint and Deterioration Effect in the Steel Rolling Process

Lan-Meng Meng1, Ran Ma1, Yu-Zhong Zhang2   

  1. 1 School of Management Engineering, Qingdao University of Technology, Qingdao 266520, Shandong, China;
    2 Institute of Operations Research, Qufu Normal University, Rizhao 276826, Shandong, China
  • Received:2023-09-13 Revised:2024-05-22 Online:2026-06-30 Published:2026-07-06
  • Contact: Ran Ma E-mail:sungirlmr@126.com
  • Supported by:
    This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 12271295 and 12371319) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (No. ZR2020MA028).

Abstract: This paper focuses on the online production scheduling of the steel rolling processes in a single-machine environment with objective to minimize the maximum delivery completion time of all of the jobs, subject to the job deterioration effect and nondelayed processing constraint. The deterioration is reflected in the processing time of the job. Specifically, the job's processing time is a linear function of its start time and can be denoted as $p_j=a_j(A+B t)$, where $A>0, B>0$ and $a_j>0$ represents the job's processing deterioration rate. For this problem, we firstly show that the competitive ratio of any deterministic online algorithm is not less than $1+B a_{\text {max }}$. Then, we design an online algorithm called Modified-Largest Delivery Time (M-LDT) and show the algorithm M-LDT is $(1+\alpha)\left(1+B a_{\max }\right)$-competitive, where $\alpha$ is the positive root of $\alpha^2-\alpha-1=0$. Finally, we use the combination of graphs and tables to give the simulation results of multiple instances, and then verify the correctness and effectiveness of our proposed online algorithm.

Key words: Scheduling, Online algorithm, Delivery time, Deteriorating effect, Non-delayed processing constraint

CLC Number: