Stochastic Scheduling with Abandonment: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for the Optimality of a Strict Priority Policy

Strict priority policies in a stochastic system with abandonment In the technical note “Stochastic scheduling with abandonment: Necessary and sufficient conditions for the optimality of a strict priority policy,” Chen, Gayon, and Lemaire consider a stochastic scheduling problem in which jobs abandon when their waiting time exceeds their lifetime. Such a problem arises, for example, in call centers or emergency systems. It is known that the optimal policy is a strict priority policy under some sets of conditions. The authors provide the first set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a problem with two types of jobs. They also provide conjectures to guide toward generalizations of the proposed conditions.