  Motivated by the current research in data centers and cloud computing, we
study the problem of scheduling a set of two-stage jobs on multiple two-stage
flowshops. A new formulation for configurations of such scheduling is proposed,
which leads directly to improvements to the complexity of scheduling algorithms
for the problem. Motivated by the observation that the costs of the two stages
can be significantly different, we present deeper study on the structures of
the problem that leads to a new approach to designing scheduling algorithms for
the problem. With more thorough analysis, we show that the new approach gives
very significant improved scheduling algorithms for the problem when the costs
of the two stages are different significantly. Improved approximation
algorithms for the problem are also presented.
