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Scheduling Optional Tasks with Explanation

  • Conference paper
Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 8124))

Abstract

Many scheduling problems involve reasoning about tasks which may or may not actually occur, so called optional tasks. The state-of-the-art approach to modelling and solving such problems makes use of interval variables which allow a start time of \(\bot\) indicating the task does not run. In this paper we show we can model interval variables in a lazy clause generation solver, and create explaining propagators for scheduling constraints using these interval variables. Given the success of lazy clause generation on many scheduling problems, this combination appears to give a powerful new solving approach to scheduling problems with optional tasks. We demonstrate the new solving technology on well-studied flexible job-shop scheduling problems where we are able to close 36 open problems.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Optimisation Research Group, National ICT Australia, Australia

    Andreas Schutt, Thibaut Feydy & Peter J. Stuckey

  2. Department of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia

    Andreas Schutt, Thibaut Feydy & Peter J. Stuckey

Authors
  1. Andreas Schutt
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  2. Thibaut Feydy
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  3. Peter J. Stuckey
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information and Communication Technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, P.O. Box Forum 120, 16440, Kista, Sweden

    Christian Schulte

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Schutt, A., Feydy, T., Stuckey, P.J. (2013). Scheduling Optional Tasks with Explanation. In: Schulte, C. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming. CP 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8124. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40627-0_47

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40627-0_47

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-40626-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-40627-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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