On scheduling with ready times to minimize mean flow time

An algorithm for sequencing jobs on a single processor with the objective of minimizing the mean flow time, when the jobs may have unequal ready times, is developed. The procedure involves partitioning the problem into subproblems, and solving the subproblems by applying branch and bound techniques. Experimental evaluation shows that the resulting procedure when the partitioning scheme is applied is more efficient than existing algorithms. 1