lynx   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ejores/v323y2025i3p767-779.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trade-off between utility and fairness in two-agent single-machine scheduling

Author

Listed:
  • Agnetis, Alessandro
  • Benini, Mario
  • Nicosia, Gaia
  • Pacifici, Andrea
Abstract
We consider the problem arising when two agents, each owning a set of jobs, compete to schedule their jobs on a common processing resource. Each schedule implies a certain utility for each agent and an overall system utility. We are interested in solutions that incorporate some criterion of fairness for the agents and, at the same time, are satisfactory from the viewpoint of system utility. More precisely, we investigate the trade-off between fairness and system utility when both agents want to minimize the total completion time of their respective jobs. We analyze the structure of the set of such trade-off solutions, and propose an exact algorithm for their computation, based on the Lagrangian relaxation of a MILP formulation of the problem. A large set of computational experiments has been carried out to show the viability of the approach. Moreover, the results show that in most cases a solution having a high degree of fairness can be obtained by sacrificing a very limited amount of system utility.

Suggested Citation

  • Agnetis, Alessandro & Benini, Mario & Nicosia, Gaia & Pacifici, Andrea, 2025. "Trade-off between utility and fairness in two-agent single-machine scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 323(3), pages 767-779.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:323:y:2025:i:3:p:767-779
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2025.01.025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221725000517
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ejor.2025.01.025?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yu, Jin & Liu, Peihai & Lu, Xiwen & Gu, Manzhan, 2025. "Analyzing the price of fairness in scheduling problems with two agents," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 321(3), pages 750-759.
    2. Tang, Ming & Liao, Huchang, 2024. "Group efficiency and individual fairness tradeoff in making wise decisions," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    3. Peihai Liu & Manzhan Gu & Xiwen Lu, 2024. "Two-agent scheduling in a two-machine open shop," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 333(1), pages 275-301, February.
    4. Pferschy, Ulrich & Nicosia, Gaia & Pacifici, Andrea & Schauer, Joachim, 2021. "On the Stackelberg knapsack game," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 291(1), pages 18-31.
    5. Agnetis, Alessandro & Chen, Bo & Nicosia, Gaia & Pacifici, Andrea, 2019. "Price of fairness in two-agent single-machine scheduling problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(1), pages 79-87.
    6. Alessandro Agnetis & Gianluca De Pascale & Marco Pranzo, 2009. "Computing the Nash solution for scheduling bargaining problems," International Journal of Operational Research, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 6(1), pages 54-69.
    7. Allesandro Agnetis & Pitu B. Mirchandani & Dario Pacciarelli & Andrea Pacifici, 2004. "Scheduling Problems with Two Competing Agents," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 52(2), pages 229-242, April.
    8. Michele Samorani & Shannon L. Harris & Linda Goler Blount & Haibing Lu & Michael A. Santoro, 2022. "Overbooked and Overlooked: Machine Learning and Racial Bias in Medical Appointment Scheduling," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 24(6), pages 2825-2842, November.
    9. Dimitris Bertsimas & Vivek F. Farias & Nikolaos Trichakis, 2011. "The Price of Fairness," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 59(1), pages 17-31, February.
    10. Naldi, Maurizio & Nicosia, Gaia & Pacifici, Andrea & Pferschy, Ulrich, 2019. "Profit-fairness trade-off in project selection," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 133-146.
    11. Nicosia, Gaia & Pacifici, Andrea & Pferschy, Ulrich, 2017. "Price of Fairness for allocating a bounded resource," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 257(3), pages 933-943.
    12. Stéphane Airiau & Haris Aziz & Ioannis Caragiannis & Justin Kruger & Jérôme Lang & Dominik Peters, 2023. "Portioning Using Ordinal Preferences: Fairness and Efficiency," Post-Print hal-03843084, HAL.
    13. Chen, Violet Xinying & Hooker, J.N., 2022. "Combining leximax fairness and efficiency in a mathematical programming model," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 299(1), pages 235-248.
    14. Filippi, C. & Guastaroba, G. & Speranza, M.G., 2021. "On single-source capacitated facility location with cost and fairness objectives," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 289(3), pages 959-974.
    15. Tony Haitao Cui & Jagmohan S. Raju & Z. John Zhang, 2007. "Fairness and Channel Coordination," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(8), pages 1303-1314, August.
    16. Jiang, Yanmin & Wu, Xiaole & Chen, Bo & Hu, Qiying, 2021. "Rawlsian fairness in push and pull supply chains," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 291(1), pages 194-205.
    17. Tang, Lixin & Zhao, Xiaoli & Liu, Jiyin & Leung, Joseph Y.-T., 2017. "Competitive two-agent scheduling with deteriorating jobs on a single parallel-batching machine," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 263(2), pages 401-411.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Agnetis, Alessandro & Chen, Bo & Nicosia, Gaia & Pacifici, Andrea, 2019. "Price of fairness in two-agent single-machine scheduling problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(1), pages 79-87.
    2. Yu, Jin & Liu, Peihai & Lu, Xiwen & Gu, Manzhan, 2025. "Analyzing the price of fairness in scheduling problems with two agents," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 321(3), pages 750-759.
    3. Hermelin, Danny & Molter, Hendrik & Niedermeier, Rolf & Pinedo, Michael & Shabtay, Dvir, 2025. "Fairness in repetitive scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 323(3), pages 724-738.
    4. Tom Demeulemeester & Dries Goossens & Ben Hermans & Roel Leus, 2023. "Fair integer programming under dichotomous and cardinal preferences," Papers 2306.13383, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    5. Chen, Rubing & Geng, Zhichao & Lu, Lingfa & Yuan, Jinjiang & Zhang, Yuan, 2022. "Pareto-scheduling of two competing agents with their own equal processing times," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 301(2), pages 414-431.
    6. Yubai Zhang & Zhao Zhang & Zhaohui Liu, 0. "The price of fairness for a two-agent scheduling game minimizing total completion time," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-19.
    7. Akoluk, Damla & Karsu, Özlem, 2022. "Ensuring multidimensional equality in public service," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    8. Ruyan He & Jinjiang Yuan, 2020. "Two-Agent Preemptive Pareto-Scheduling to Minimize Late Work and Other Criteria," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(9), pages 1-18, September.
    9. Choi, Tsan-Ming & Zhang, Ting, 2023. "Will being an angel bring more harm than good? Altruistic newsvendors with different risk attitudes," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 305(3), pages 1153-1165.
    10. Jun Pei & Jinling Wei & Baoyu Liao & Xinbao Liu & Panos M. Pardalos, 2020. "Two-agent scheduling on bounded parallel-batching machines with an aging effect of job-position-dependent," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 294(1), pages 191-223, November.
    11. Qing Feng & Dengfeng Li & Guichuan Zhou & Zhibin Wu, 2024. "Fairness based unique common equilibrium efficient frontier for evaluating decision-making units with fixed-sum outputs," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 341(1), pages 427-449, October.
    12. Dimitris Bertsimas & Vivek F. Farias & Nikolaos Trichakis, 2012. "On the Efficiency-Fairness Trade-off," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(12), pages 2234-2250, December.
    13. Gao, Yuan & Yuan, Jinjiang & Ng, C.T. & Cheng, T.C.E., 2019. "A further study on two-agent parallel-batch scheduling with release dates and deteriorating jobs to minimize the makespan," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 273(1), pages 74-81.
    14. Peihai Liu & Manzhan Gu & Xiwen Lu, 2024. "Two-agent scheduling in a two-machine open shop," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 333(1), pages 275-301, February.
    15. Lang, Fabian & Fink, Andreas & Brandt, Tobias, 2016. "Design of automated negotiation mechanisms for decentralized heterogeneous machine scheduling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 248(1), pages 192-203.
    16. Liu, Songsong & Papageorgiou, Lazaros G., 2018. "Fair profit distribution in multi-echelon supply chains via transfer prices," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 77-94.
    17. Aziz, Haris & Huang, Xin & Mattei, Nicholas & Segal-Halevi, Erel, 2023. "Computing welfare-Maximizing fair allocations of indivisible goods," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(2), pages 773-784.
    18. Perez-Gonzalez, Paz & Framinan, Jose M., 2014. "A common framework and taxonomy for multicriteria scheduling problems with interfering and competing jobs: Multi-agent scheduling problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 235(1), pages 1-16.
    19. Stanisław Gawiejnowicz, 2020. "A review of four decades of time-dependent scheduling: main results, new topics, and open problems," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 3-47, February.
    20. Huang, He & Wu, Dandan & Xu, Hongyan, 2025. "Signaling or not? The pricing strategy under fairness concerns and cost information asymmetry," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 321(3), pages 789-799.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:323:y:2025:i:3:p:767-779. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.
    Лучший частный хостинг