Quantum Annealing Implementation of Job-Shop Scheduling

Abstract

A quantum annealing solver for the renowned job-shop scheduling problem (JSP) is presented in detail. After formulating the problem as a time-indexed quadratic unconstrained binary optimization problem, several pre-processing and graph embedding strategies are employed to compile optimally parametrized families of the JSP for scheduling instances of up to six jobs and six machines on the D-Wave Systems Vesuvius processor. Problem simplifications and partitioning algorithms, including variable pruning and running strategies that consider tailored binary searches, are discussed and the results from the processor are compared against state-of-the-art global-optimum solvers.