On the bottleneck assignment problem

In this paper, a new approach for solving the bottleneck assignment problem is presented. The problem is treated as a special class of permutation problems which we call max-min permutation problems. By defining a suitable neighborhood system in the space of permutations and designating certain permutations as critical solutions, it is shown that any critical solution yields a global optimum. This theorem is then used as a basis to develop a general method to solve max-min permutation problems.This work was carried out by the junior author while holding a Purdue University Fellowship.