Title: Inverse scheduling: applications in shipping

Authors: F. Zhang, C.T. Ng, G. Tang, T.C.E. Cheng, Y.H.V. Lun

Addresses: Faculty of Science, Shanghai Second Polytechnic University, 2360 Jin Hai Road, Pudong New District, Shanghai 201209, China. ' Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong. ' School of Economics and Management, Shanghai Second Polytechnic University, 2360 Jin Hai Road, Pudong New District, Shanghai 201209, China. ' Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong. ' Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Abstract: Optimisation problems are concerned with finding optimal solutions with respect to some objective functions with given problem parameters. Inverse optimisation refers to the situation where the problem parameters are minimally adjusted so that a given feasible solution becomes an optimal solution with respect to the objective function. In this paper we study inverse optimisation of single-machine scheduling problems to minimise the total weighted completion time, whereby the processing times and the weights are minimally adjusted, respectively, so that a given feasible schedule becomes an optimal schedule, under the constraint that the objective value based on the adjusted parameters is no worse than that based on the original parameters. Three distance measures, namely L1-norm, L2-norm, and L-norm, are considered for each of the problems under study. Such scheduling problems are known as inverse scheduling, which has wide applications including berth allocation in quayside in shipping operations.

Keywords: single machine scheduling; inverse optimisation; inverse scheduling; berth allocation; shipping operations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTL.2011.040800

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2011 Vol.3 No.3, pp.312 - 322

Published online: 21 Feb 2015 *

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