A Novel Control-Theory-Based Approach to Scheduling of High-Throughput Screening System for Enzymatic Assay

Fast Algorithm for High-Throughput Screening Scheduling Based on the PERT/CPM Project Management Technique

“…Although the scheduling problem under consideration is complex and NP-hard, we solve it efficiently using the proposed method if the number of screening operations is limited, which is a condition usually encountered in practice [11,12]. This result complements the original studies of Oke et al [11,13] and Wu et al [12,14], who used mixed integer programming and resource-oriented Petri nets, respectively, to model, analyze, and solve the HTS scheduling problem for enzymatic assays. The proposed PERT/CPM method works in conjunction with the prohibited intervals subalgorithm [15], which weeds out unfeasible solutions and finds the optimal schedule in strongly polynomial time (in the number of operations m), O(m 3 log m), which, as far as we know, cannot be achieved using existing algorithms.…”

“…These techniques are widely used in many industries, sectors, and services [18,19]. The PERT/CPM method is successfully used in this study to solve the practical problem considered in [11,14], and, as we will show below, this mathematical model has significant computational and practical advantages over existing MIP and Petri net methods.…”

“…Enzymatic assays are one of the typical applications of HTS systems. A typical HTS system for an enzymatic assay includes the following basic workstations [11][12][13][14]:…”

“…In Figure 1 below we have plotted a PERT graph that depicts a typical HTS screening process and its actual timing characteristics, as presented in [11,14] Nodes represent repetitive operations performed by workstations during the screening of each microplate. Capital letters within nodes identify workstations as follows: S for Storage Centre, C for Cytomat2C, M for Multidrop-384, E for Envision, and T for Teleshake.…”

“…In Figure 1 below we have plotted a PERT graph that depicts a typical HTS screening process and its actual timing characteristics, as presented in [11,14]. The operations shown in this figure are repeated for each individual microplate.…”