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Reducing domains for search in CLP(FD) and its application to job-shop scheduling

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Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming — CP '95 (CP 1995)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 976))

Abstract

This paper describes a generalization of the “labelling” search strategy and its application to scheduling problems. The assignment of a value to the selected variable is replaced by reduction of the domain of the variable. This strategy can be applied for solving problems modelled in CLP(FD).

We discuss the application of this domain-reducing strategy to the well-known problem of 10×10 job-shop scheduling. The computation results obtained using this strategy show its advantages. A good solution, coming to within 3% of the optimal solution, is generated in less than 1 second, using only a simple heuristics for variable selection and domain reduction. Compared with the standard strategy, the domain-reducing strategy exhibits more robustness with respect to the given planning horizon. Assuming that there is a choice of machines, a good solution can be generated with the same strategy, deviating from the optimal solution by less than 4%.

Our experience has shown that the domain-reducing strategy is suitable as a basic search strategy for solving job-shop problems by means of CLP, allowing good (near-to-optimum) solutions to be computed fast.

This research was funded by the German Federal Minister for Education, Science, Research, and Technology under grant 01IW206

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute for Computer Architecture and Software Technology, GMD-FIRST, Rudower Chaussee 5, D-12489, Berlin, Germany

    Hans-Joachim Goltz

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  1. Hans-Joachim Goltz
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Ugo Montanari Francesca Rossi

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© 1995 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Goltz, HJ. (1995). Reducing domains for search in CLP(FD) and its application to job-shop scheduling. In: Montanari, U., Rossi, F. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming — CP '95. CP 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 976. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60299-2_33

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60299-2_33

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-60299-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44788-7

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