Weighted Job Scheduling Algorithm can also be denoted as Weighted Activity Selection Algorithm.

The problem is, given certain jobs with their start time and end time, and a profit you make when you finish the job, what is the maximum profit you can make given no two jobs can be executed in parallel?

This one looks like Activity Selection using Greedy Algorithm, but there’s an added twist. That is, instead of maximizing the number of jobs finished, we focus on making the maximum profit. The number of jobs performed doesn’t matter here.

Let’s look at an example:

+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|          Name           |    A    |    B    |    C    |    D    |    E    |    F    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|(Start Time, Finish Time)|  (2,5)  |  (6,7)  |  (7,9)  |  (1,3)  |  (5,8)  |  (4,6)  |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|         Profit          |    6    |    4    |    2    |    5    |    11   |    5    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+

The jobs are denoted with a name, their start and finishing time and profit. After a few iterations, we can find out if we perform Job-A and Job-E, we can get the maximum profit of 17. Now how to find this out using an algorithm?

The first thing we do is sort the jobs by their finishing time in non-decreasing order. Why do we do this? It’s because if we select a job that takes less time to finish, then we leave the most amount of time for choosing other jobs. We have:

+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|          Name           |    D    |    A    |    F    |    B    |    E    |    C    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|(Start Time, Finish Time)|  (1,3)  |  (2,5)  |  (4,6)  |  (6,7)  |  (5,8)  |  (7,9)  |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|         Profit          |    5    |    6    |    5    |    4    |    11   |    2    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+

We’ll have an additional temporary array Acc_Prof of size n (Here, n denotes the total number of jobs). This will contain the maximum accumulated profit of performing the jobs. Don’t get it? Wait and watch. We’ll initialize the values of the array with the profit of each jobs. That means, Acc_Prof[i] will at first hold the profit of performing i-th job.

+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|         Acc_Prof        |    5    |    6    |    5    |    4    |    11   |    2    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+

Now let’s denote position 2 with i, and position 1 will be denoted with j. Our strategy will be to iterate j from 1 to i-1 and after each iteration, we will increment i by 1, until i becomes n+1.

j        i

+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|          Name           |    D    |    A    |    F    |    B    |    E    |    C    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|(Start Time, Finish Time)|  (1,3)  |  (2,5)  |  (4,6)  |  (6,7)  |  (5,8)  |  (7,9)  |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|         Profit          |    5    |    6    |    5    |    4    |    11   |    2    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|         Acc_Prof        |    5    |    6    |    5    |    4    |    11   |    2    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+

We check if Job[i] and Job[j] overlap, that is, if the finish time of Job[j] is greater than Job[i]‘s start time, then these two jobs can’t be done together. However, if they don’t overlap, we’ll check if Acc_Prof[j] + Profit[i] > Acc_Prof[i]. If this is the case, we will update Acc_Prof[i] = Acc_Prof[j] + Profit[i]. That is:

if Job[j].finish_time <= Job[i].start_time
    if Acc_Prof[j] + Profit[i] > Acc_Prof[i]
        Acc_Prof[i] = Acc_Prof[j] + Profit[i]
    endif
endif

Here Acc_Prof[j] + Profit[i] represents the accumulated profit of doing these two jobs toegther. Let’s check it for our example:

Here Job[j] overlaps with Job[i]. So these to can’t be done together. Since our j is equal to i-1, we increment the value of i to i+1 that is 3. And we make j = 1.

j                   i

+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|          Name           |    D    |    A    |    F    |    B    |    E    |    C    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|(Start Time, Finish Time)|  (1,3)  |  (2,5)  |  (4,6)  |  (6,7)  |  (5,8)  |  (7,9)  |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|         Profit          |    5    |    6    |    5    |    4    |    11   |    2    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|         Acc_Prof        |    5    |    6    |    5    |    4    |    11   |    2    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+

Now Job[j] and Job[i] don’t overlap. The total amount of profit we can make by picking these two jobs is: Acc_Prof[j] + Profit[i] = 5 + 5 = 10 which is greater than Acc_Prof[i]. So we update Acc_Prof[i] = 10. We also increment j by 1. We get,

j         i

+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|          Name           |    D    |    A    |    F    |    B    |    E    |    C    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|(Start Time, Finish Time)|  (1,3)  |  (2,5)  |  (4,6)  |  (6,7)  |  (5,8)  |  (7,9)  |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|         Profit          |    5    |    6    |    5    |    4    |    11   |    2    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
|         Acc_Prof        |    5    |    6    |    10   |    4    |    11   |    2    |
+-------------------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+

Here, Job[j] overlaps with Job[i] and j is also equal to i-1. So we increment i by 1, and make j = 1. We get,