A Critical Path-driven Scheduling Algorithm for Multi-Carrier Aircraft Support Workflows

Objectives Carrier-based aircraft deck support operation scheduling is an important part of the aircraft carrier combat support system. Existing studies mostly adopt flexible job shop scheduling models, which makes it difficult to fully describe such characteristics as adjustable operation sequences, parallel execution of multiple operations, and coupled resource-station constraints in support tasks. To address this issue, a workflow support scheduling method based on dynamic critical-path ranking is proposed. Methods The multi-aircraft collaborative support process is modeled as a workflow scheduling problem with spatiotemporal constraints, and a mathematical model is constructed to describe task logical dependencies, parallel relationships, and resource occupation relationships. Furthermore, a dynamic critical-path ranking algorithm is designed, in which the critical path is dynamically identified, edge weights are updated, and task priorities are adjusted. Combined with a resource-station matching strategy, the proposed algorithm realizes the coordinated optimization of task execution sequences and resource allocation schemes. Results Experimental results show that, compared with the traditional heterogeneous earliest-finish-time algorithm, the proposed algorithm reduces the support completion time by 5.99%. Conclusions The proposed method improves the modeling capability for task flexibility and parallelism in carrier-based aircraft deck support operations, and provides an effective solution method for support operation scheduling under complex constraints.