Investigation of "Enhancing flexibility and robustness in multi-agent task scheduling"

TL;DR

This paper analyzes various flexibility distribution strategies in multi-agent task scheduling, identifying factors affecting schedule robustness, and proposes new methods that improve delay mitigation.

Contribution

It studies Wilson et al.'s flexibility distributions, identifies key factors influencing violations, and introduces three improved flexibility distribution strategies.

Findings

Identified factors affecting task delay violations.

Proposed three new flexibility distributions.

New strategies perform as well or better than existing ones.

Abstract

Wilson et al. propose a measure of flexibility in project scheduling problems and propose several ways of distributing flexibility over tasks without overrunning the deadline. These schedules prove quite robust: delays of some tasks do not necessarily lead to delays of subsequent tasks. The number of tasks that finish late depends, among others, on the way of distributing flexibility. In this paper I study the different flexibility distributions proposed by Wilson et al. and the differences in number of violations (tasks that finish too late). I show one factor in the instances that causes differences in the number of violations, as well as two properties of the flexibility distribution that cause them to behave differently. Based on these findings, I propose three new flexibility distributions. Depending on the nature of the delays, these new flexibility distributions perform as good as or better than the distributions by Wilson et al.