The Generalized Assignment Problem (GAP) is the problem of finding the mini
mal cost assignment of jobs to machines such that each job is assigned to e
xactly one machine, subject to capacity restrictions on the machines. We pr
opose a class of greedy algorithms for the GAP. A family of weight function
s is defined to measure a pseudo-cost of assigning a job to a machine. This
weight function in turn is used to measure the desirability of assigning e
ach job to each of the machines. The greedy algorithm then schedules jobs a
ccording to a decreasing order of desirability. A relationship with the par
tial solution given by the LP-relaxation of the GAP is found, and we derive
conditions under which the algorithm is asymptotically optimal in a probab
ilistic sense. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V, All rights reserved.