Partially Preemptive Multi Skill/Mode Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling with Generalized Precedence Relations and Calendars

Authors Guillaume Povéda , Nahum Alvarez , Christian Artigues



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Author Details

Guillaume Povéda
  • Airbus (AI Research), Toulouse, France
Nahum Alvarez
  • Airbus (AI Research), Toulouse, France
Christian Artigues
  • LAAS-CNRS, Universite de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse, France

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. In particular, we thank the anonymous reviewer that pointed out the issue linked to preemption in the CP-Base model and made inspiring suggestions that leaded to the CP-SmartPreemption model.

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Guillaume Povéda, Nahum Alvarez, and Christian Artigues. Partially Preemptive Multi Skill/Mode Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling with Generalized Precedence Relations and Calendars. In 29th International Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 280, pp. 31:1-31:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)
https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CP.2023.31

Abstract

Multi skill resource-constrained project scheduling Problems (MS-RCPSP) have been object of studies from many years. Also, preemption is an important feature of real-life scheduling models. However, very little research has been investigated concerning MS-RCPSPs including preemption, and even less research moving out from academic benchmarks to real problem solving. In this paper we present a solution to those problems based on a hybrid method derived from large neighborhood search incorporating constraint programming components tailored to deal with complex scheduling constraints. We also present a constraint programming model adapted to preemption. The methods are implemented in a new open source python library allowing to easily reuse existing modeling languages and solvers. We evaluate the methods on an industrial case study from aircraft manufacturing including additional complicating constraints such as generalized precedence relations, resource calendars and partial preemption on which the standard CP Optimizer solver, even with the preemption-specific model, is unable to provide solutions in reasonable times. The large neighborhood search method is also able to find new best solutions on standard multi-skill project scheduling instances, performing better than a reference method from the literature.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Computing methodologies → Planning and scheduling
  • Applied computing → Industry and manufacturing
  • Theory of computation → Optimization with randomized search heuristics
  • Theory of computation → Constraint and logic programming
Keywords
  • Large-scale scheduling problem
  • partial preemption
  • multi-skill
  • multi-mode
  • resource calendars
  • constraint programming
  • large neighborhood search

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