SCHEDULING ON M PARALLEL MACHINES SUBJECT TO RANDOM BREAKDOWNS TO MINIMIZE EXPECTED MEAN FLOW TIME

The problem of scheduling n jobs on m parallel machines is considered when the machines are subject to random breakdowns and job processing times are random variables. An objective function of mean flow time is developed for a general parallel machine system, and an expression of its expected value is derived. The problem is transformed into a dete rministic unrelated parallel machine scheduling model with modified pr ocessing times when the number of breakdowns is modeled as a generaliz ed Poisson process. (C) 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.