Exploiting Structure in the Bottleneck Assignment Problem⁎The research is funded by Defence Science and Technology Group through research agreements MyIP: 7558 and MyIP: 7562. Issue 2 (2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Khoo, Mitchell; Wood, Tony A.; Manzie, Chris; Shames, Iman
• Is Part Of: IFAC-PapersOnLine. Volume 53:Issue 2(2020)
• Page Start: 3310
• Page End: 3315
• Publication Date: 2020
• Subjects: Algorithms -- Decision-making -- Graph theory -- Agents -- Optimization problems; Automatic control -- Periodicals; 629.805
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ifacol.2020.12.1493
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2405-8963

Abstract

Abstract: An assignment problem arises when there exists a set of tasks that must be allocated to a set of agents. The bottleneck assignment problem (BAP) has the objective of minimising the most costly allocation of a task to an agent. Under certain conditions the structure of the BAP can be exploited such that subgroups of tasks are assigned separately with lower complexity and then merged to form a combined assignment. In particular, we discuss merging the assignments from two separate BAPs and use the solution of the subproblems to bound the solution of the combined problem. We also provide conditions for cases where the solution of the subproblems produces an exact solution to the BAP over the combined problem. We then introduce a particular algorithm for solving the BAP that takes advantage of this insight. The methods are demonstrated in a numerical case study.