Heuristics for uniform parallel machine scheduling problem with minimizing makespan

This paper considers the problem of uniform parallel machine scheduling with unequal release dates so as to minimize makespan. This problem is proved to an NP-hard problem. Heuristics in existence for the problem are analyzed, and then we present an improved algorithm. The performance of the algorithms by experiment is also analyzed. The heuristic is further extended by applying the method of variable neighborhood search, which is used for improving the quality of the solutions obtained by the original heuristics.