Constraint Programming Approach to Precast Production Scheduling |
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Authors: | W. T. Chan Hao Hu |
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Affiliation: | 1Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, National Univ. of Singapore, Singapore 119260. 2Associate Professor, Aetna School of Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ., Shanghai 200052, China.
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Abstract: | Current scheduling practices in precast plants are fairly basic and depend greatly on experience. This may lead to inefficient resource utilization, over-inventory, and/or missing delivery dates. Computer assisted scheduling may therefore be useful in producing better production schedules. This paper shows how constraint programming (CP) can be applied in production scheduling for precast plants. The paper describes a constrained precast scheduling model that incorporates the key constraints and objectives considered by production schedulers. A capacity-based backward-scheduling earliest due date rule and a CP approach are developed to solve the model. The CP approach is computationally efficient, even though it incorporates many problem-derived constraints. The efficiency of the CP approach lies in the fact that the representation (model) is separated from the algorithm (solver). Strategies to improve the performance of the CP approach are identified, and the CP approach is compared against commonly used heuristic rules on an example problem. |
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Keywords: | Construction Computer aided scheduling Computer programming |
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