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Scheduling Reclaimer Operations in the Stockyard to Minimize Makespan

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Abstract

This paper considers a reclaimer scheduling problem in which one has to collect bulk material from stockpiles in the quay in such a way that the time used is minimized. When reclaimers are allowed to work on the same stockpile simultaneously, a fully polynomial time approximation scheme (FPTAS) is designed. Further, we present a 2-approximation algorithm in the case that any stockpile can be handled by only one reclaimer at a time. When the number of reclaimers is two, we give a 3/2-approximation algorithm. Numerical experiments show that the algorithms perform much better than our worst case analysis guarantees.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. East China University of Science and Technology, 200237, Shanghai, China

    Chao Wang & Xi-wen Lu

  2. VU University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081, HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    René Sitters

Authors
  1. Chao Wang
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  2. Xi-wen Lu
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  3. René Sitters
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xi-wen Lu.

Additional information

Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11371137 and No.71431004).

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Wang, C., Lu, Xw. & Sitters, R. Scheduling Reclaimer Operations in the Stockyard to Minimize Makespan. Acta Math. Appl. Sin. Engl. Ser. 34, 597–609 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10255-018-0758-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10255-018-0758-6

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