Schedule-induced posets (Q1081529)

Schedules are a basic tool in the treatment of project networks and sequencing problems. For many questions, however, it is not the schedule itself but a partial order (poset) naturally induced on the set of activities that is really relied on. In fact, this correspondence of the usually uncountably many schedules to a finite system of posets was a key to many recent results in this field and constitutes the discrete character of the described problems, all the more so as additional properties of the respective schedules can very often be reflected in related properties of these induced posets. The present paper gives insights into the class of those posets that can be induced by schedules. An immediate observation is that schedule- induced posets are just the interval orders. More involved characterizations are concerned with the possible 'local optimality' of such structures. One such property is the existence of activity durations that will result in a project duration of the considered poset that is shorter (simultaneously) than the duration of all its extensions. A similar, related characterization for general regular cost functions (in particular tardiness cost) is also included, as are insights into 'best' activity durations with the mentioned properties. The paper closes with some remarks and numerical data on the considered class of posets as a whole.