APPLICATION OF CONSTRAINT LOGIC PROGRAMMING TO JOB SEQUENCING

In this paper, we show an application of constraint logic programming to the operation scheduling on machines in a job shop. Constraint logic programming is a new genre of programming technique combining the declarative aspect of logic programming with the efficiency of constraint manipulation and solving mechanisms. Due to the latter feature, combinatorial search problems like scheduling may be resolved efficiently. In this study, the jobs that consist of a set of related operations are supposed to be constrained by precedence and resource availability. We also explore how the constraint solving mechanisms can be defined over a scheduling domain. Thus the scheduling approach presented here has two benefits: the flexibility that can be expected from an artificial intelligence tool by simplifying greatly the problem; and the efficiency that stems from the capability of constraint logic programming to manipulate constraints to prune the search space in an a priori manner.