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<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD JATS (Z39.96) Journal Publishing DTD v1.0 20120330//EN" "JATS-journalpublishing1.dtd"><article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">INFORMATICA</journal-id><journal-title-group><journal-title>Informatica</journal-title></journal-title-group><issn pub-type="epub">0868-4952</issn><issn pub-type="ppub">0868-4952</issn><publisher><publisher-name>VU</publisher-name></publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">INF25103</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.15388/Informatica.2014.03</article-id><article-categories><subj-group subj-group-type="heading"><subject>Research article</subject></subj-group></article-categories><title-group><article-title>A Problem of Scheduling Jobs with Non-Monotonic Stepwise Values</article-title></title-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="Author"><name><surname>Janiak</surname><given-names>Adam</given-names></name><email xlink:href="mailto:adam.antoni.janiak@gmail.com">adam.antoni.janiak@gmail.com</email><xref ref-type="aff" rid="j_INFORMATICA_aff_000"/><xref ref-type="corresp" rid="fn1">∗</xref></contrib><contrib contrib-type="Author"><name><surname>Krysiak</surname><given-names>Tomasz</given-names></name><email xlink:href="mailto:tomasz.a.krysiak@gmail.com">tomasz.a.krysiak@gmail.com</email><xref ref-type="aff" rid="j_INFORMATICA_aff_000"/></contrib><contrib contrib-type="Author"><name><surname>Trela</surname><given-names>Radosław</given-names></name><email xlink:href="mailto:radoslaw.trela@pwr.wroc.pl">radoslaw.trela@pwr.wroc.pl</email><xref ref-type="aff" rid="j_INFORMATICA_aff_000"/></contrib><aff id="j_INFORMATICA_aff_000">Institute of Computer Engineering, Control and Robotics, Wrocław University of Technology, Janiszewskiego 11/17, 50-372 Wrocław, Poland</aff></contrib-group><author-notes><corresp id="fn1"><label>∗</label>Corresponding author.</corresp></author-notes><pub-date pub-type="epub"><day>01</day><month>01</month><year>2014</year></pub-date><volume>25</volume><issue>1</issue><fpage>37</fpage><lpage>53</lpage><history><date date-type="received"><day>01</day><month>11</month><year>2011</year></date><date date-type="accepted"><day>01</day><month>11</month><year>2013</year></date></history><abstract><p>The paper deals with a parallel processor scheduling problem with changeable job values. Contrary to other papers in this area, we assume that job values are characterized by a non-monotonic stepwise functions of job completion times (previously only non-increasing functions have been considered). We give examples of real-life systems that can be modelled in such a way, in order to show that the problem is interesting from practical point of view. The problem is shown to be NP-hard and a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm for its special case is constructed. Moreover, a number of heuristic algorithms is provided and experimentally tested.</p></abstract><kwd-group><label>Keywords</label><kwd>scheduling</kwd><kwd>parallel processors</kwd><kwd>non-monotonic job value</kwd><kwd>pseudo-polynomial algorithm</kwd><kwd>heuristic</kwd></kwd-group></article-meta></front></article>