In this paper we study the classical no-wait flowshop scheduling problem with makespan objective (F|no-wait|C max in the standard three-field notation). This problem is well-known to be a special case of the asymmetric traveling salesman problem (ATSP) and as such has an approximation algorithm with logarithmic performance guarantee. In this work we show a reverse connection, we show that any polynomial time α-approximation algorithm for the no-wait flowshop scheduling problem with makespan objective implies the existence of a polynomial-time α(1 + ε)-approximation algorithm for the ATSP, for any ε > 0. This in turn implies that all non-approximability results for the ATSP (current or future) will carry over to its special case. In particular, it follows that no-wait flowshop problem is APX-hard, which is the first non-approximability result for this problem. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.
CITATION STYLE
Mucha, M., & Sviridenko, M. (2013). No-wait flowshop scheduling is as hard as asymmetric traveling salesman problem. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) (Vol. 7965 LNCS, pp. 769–779). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-39206-1_65
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