Constraint Satisfaction
for Planning and Scheduling
The tutorial introduces to constraint satisfaction technology with emphasis to its applications in planning and scheduling. It gives a brief survey of constraint satisfaction in general, including description of mainstream solving techniques, i.e., constraint propagation combined with search. Then, it focuses to specific time and resource constraints and to search techniques and heuristics useful in planning and scheduling. Last but not least, the basic approaches to constraint modelling for planning and scheduling problems are presented.
As the current planning and scheduling technologies are coming together by assuming time and resource constraints in planning or by allowing introduction of new activities during scheduling, the role of constraint satisfaction as the bridging technology is increasing and so it is important for researchers in these areas to understand the underlying principles and techniques.
The tutorial is targeted to a broad planning and scheduling community, in particular to those who are not familiar with details of constraint satisfaction technology. The audience will take away a basic understanding of how constraints work with more details on special constraints for planning and scheduling. No prior knowledge of constraint satisfaction is required.