Weighted Chairman Assignment and Flow-Time Scheduling

ITCS 2026 | , pp. 98:1-98:15

Publication

Given positive integers m,n, a fractional assignment x∈[0,1]m×n and weights d∈ℝ>0n, we show that there exists an assignment y in \{0,1\}^{m times n}y in \{0,1\}^{m times n} so that for every i∈[m] and t∈[n], Big|sum_{j in [t]} d_j (x_{ij} – y_{ij}) Big|Big|sum_{j in [t]} d_j (x_{ij} – y_{ij}) Big| This generalizes a result of Tijdeman (1973) on the unweighted version, known as the chairman assignment problem. This also confirms a special case of the single-source unsplittable flow conjecture with arc-wise lower and upper bounds due to Morell and Skutella (IPCO 2020). As an application, we consider a scheduling problem where jobs have release times and machines have closing times, and a job can only be scheduled on a machine if it is released before the machine closes. We give a 3-approximation algorithm for maximum flow-time minimization.

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