SPT optimality (mostly) via linear programming

One of the oldest results in scheduling theory is that the Shortest Processing Time (SPT) rule finds an optimal solution to the problem of scheduling jobs on identical parallel machines to minimize average job completion times. We present a new proof of correctness of SPT based on linear programming (LP). Our proof relies on a generalization of a single-machine result that yields an equivalence between two scheduling problems. We first identify and solve an appropriate variant of our problem, then map its solutions to solutions for our original problem to establish SPT optimality. Geometric insights used therein may find further uses; we demonstrate two applications of the same principle in generalized settings.