On the Complexity of Non-preemptive Shop Scheduling with Two Jobs

Abstract In this note, we investigate the time complexity of non-preemptive shop scheduling problems with two jobs. First we study mixed shop scheduling where one job has a fixed order of operations and the operations of the other job may be executed in arbitrary order. This problem is shown to be binary NP-complete with respect to all traditional optimality criteria even if distinct operations of the same job require different machines. Moreover, we devise a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm which solves the problem with respect to all non-decreasing objective functions. Finally, when the job with fixed order of operations may visit a machine more than once, the problem becomes unary NP-complete.Then we discuss shop scheduling with two jobs having chain-like routings. It is shown that the problem is unary NP-complete with respect to all traditional optimality criteria even if one of the jobs has fixed order of operations and the jobs cannot visit a machine twice.