Special Issue of the Journal of Scheduling

[Edmund Burke <ekb@Cs.Nott.AC.UK>]

                 Special Issue of the Journal of Scheduling

         Pushing the Envelope: Extending Classical Scheduling Models to
                     Incorporate Practical Constraints

         Guest Editors:  Reha Uszoy, Stephen Smith and Ken McKay

    (uzsoy@ecn.purdue.edu, sfs@cs.cmu.edu, kenmckay@morgan.ucs.mun.ca)

Since its entry into the mainstream of academic research in
the late 1950's, the field of scheduling has been addressed by a
variety of authors from a variety of perspectives. Research in
combinatorial optimization has evolved from basic formulations of
single machine and job shop scheduling problems, while work in
control theory alternatively has emphasized dynamics and stochastic
scheduling models, and the field of artificial intelligence has
promoted constraint satisfaction and heuristic search paradigms.
Over the years, a vast and diverse body of literature has arisen
from these various roots, and a large body of knowledge and
algorithms now exists for tackling scheduling applications. At the
same time, the complexities and idiosyncracies of practical
scheduling environments continue to pose significant challenges for
current techniques and there is a continuing need to expand the
scope of scheduling research to address practical problems.

The purpose of this special issue is to highlight current
research aimed at pushing the envelope on classical scheduling
models and tackling issues of applicability in practical domains. Of
central interest is the issue of how to expand and to exploit the
extensive knowledge base developed through mainstream scheduling research
to address problem characteristics, constraints and contexts that may differ
significantly from the original manufacturing formulations that have
historically underpinned scheduling research. Some examples of such
efforts include development of scheduling models for newly emerging
scheduling applications (e.g., multimedia data transmission in the Internet);
development of collaborative scheduling systems that combine human
experts and algorithms in creative ways; how to alter or to extend
existing formulations to incorporate specific complexities, how to
exploit the immense amounts of real-time data that can be generated by
modern sensor technology (such as shop-floor status data in manufacturing
or information flow in computer networks) to develop execution
sensitive solutions to dynamic scheduling problems. The development
of effective methodologies for testing scheduling algorithms in realistic
environments, and quantitatively assessing the impact and usability of a
scheduling system within a given organizational structure are other
examples of interdisciplinary approaches to making scheduling research more
useful in practice.

Deadlines:

Submission deadline for manuscripts:May 1, 2003
First review cycle completed by: December 1, 2003
Second Review Cycle completed by: May 1, 2004
Cutoff date for accepted papers inclusion into special issue: July 1, 2004

Papers can be submitted electronically, following the Journal guidelines,
to any of the three guest editors.

Hard copy submissions should be sent to Reha Uszoy at the address below

All papers submitted to the special issue will be reviewed in
accordance with the standard procedures of the Journal of Scheduling.
Accepted papers not re-submitted in time for publication in the Special
Issue will appear in a regular issue of the Journal. Papers can be
submitted electronically, following the Journal guidelines, to any of the
three guest editors.

For more details about the Journal of Scheduling, see

http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/1094-6163
 
Correspondence Address:

Reha Uzsoy, Ph.D, P.E.
Director, Laboratory for Extended Enterprises at Purdue
Professor of Industrial Engineering
1287 Grissom Hall
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN 47907-1287
tel: (765) 494-0829
fax: (765) 494-5448
email: uzsoy@ecn.purdue.edu