The medical laboratory scheduling for weighted flow-time

This paper studies an on-line scheduling in medical laboratory. The sample of a patient is regarded as a job waiting to be scheduled, and each analyzer as a machine that may analyze several samples simultaneously as a batch. The samples arrive over time, and the information of each sample is not released until the sample arrives. Each sample is given a weight in a known range to represent its importance or urgency. Thus the medical laboratory scheduling can be described as a parallel-batch on-line scheduling problem. The objective is to minimize the maximum weighted flow-time. For the unbounded batch capacity model, a best possible on-line algorithm is established for any given range of weights. Moreover, for the bounded batch capacity model, a best possible on-line algorithm is presented for the range of weights 1 to 2.

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