Abstract
We formulate the resource-constrained project scheduling problem as a satisfiability problem and adapt a satisfiability solver for the specific domain of the problem. Our solver is lightweight and shows good performance both in finding feasible solutions and in proving lower bounds. Our numerical tests allowed us to close several benchmark instances of the RCPSP that have never been closed before by proving tighter lower bounds and by finding better feasible solutions. Using our method we solve optimally more instances of medium and large size from the benchmark library PSPLIB and do it faster compared to any other existing solver.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abdulla, P. A., Bjesse, P., & Eén, N. (2000). Symbolic reachability analysis based on SAT-solvers. In S. Graf & M. I. Schwartzbach (Eds.), Lecture notes in computer science : Vol. 1785. TACAS (pp. 411–425). Berlin: Springer.
Achterberg, T. (2007). Conflict analysis in mixed integer programming. Discrete Optimization, 4(1), 4–20.
Aloul, F. A., Ramani, A., Markov, I. L., & Sakallah, K. A. (2002). Generic ILP versus specialized 0-1 ILP: an update. In L. T. Pileggi, & A. Kuehlmann (Eds.), ICCAD (pp. 450–457). New York: ACM.
Asín, R., Nieuwenhuis, R., Oliveras, A., & Rodríguez-Carbonell, E. (2009). Cardinality networks and their applications. In Kullmann (pp. 167–180).
Bailleux, O., & Boufkhad, Y. (2003). Efficient CNF encoding of Boolean cardinality constraints. In F. Rossi (Ed.), Lecture notes in computer science : Vol. 2833. CP (pp. 108–122). Berlin: Springer.
Bailleux, O., & Boufkhad, Y. (2004). Full CNF encoding: the counting constraints case. In SAT.
Bailleux, O., Boufkhad, Y., & Roussel, O. (2009). New encodings of pseudo-Boolean constraints into CNF. In O. Kullmann (Ed.), Lecture notes in compute science : Vol. 5584. Theory and applications of satisfiability testing—SAT 2009 (pp. 181–194). 12th International Conference, SAT 2009, Swansea, UK, June 30—July 3, 2009. Berlin: Springer.
Baptiste, P., & Demassey, S. (2004). Tight LP bounds for resource constrained project scheduling. OR Spectrum, 26, 251–262.
Biere, A., Cimatti, A., Clarke, E. M., & Zhu, Y. (1999). Symbolic model checking without BDDs. In R. Cleaveland (Ed.), Lecture notes in computer science : Vol. 1579. TACAS (pp. 193–207). Berlin: Springer.
Brucker, P., & Knust, S. (2000). A linear programming and constraint propagation-based lower bound for the RCPSP. European Journal of Operational Research, 127, 355–362.
Brucker, P., Knust, S., Schoo, A., & Thiele, O. (1998). A branch and bound algorithm for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. European Journal of Operational Research, 107, 272–288.
Brucker, P., Drexl, A., Möhring, R., Neumann, K., & Pesch, E. (1999). Resource-constrained project scheduling: notation, classification, models, and methods. European Journal of Operational Research, 112, 3–41.
Cook, S. A. (1971). The complexity of theorem proving procedures. In Conf. record of 3rd STOC, Shaker Height, OH (pp. 151–158).
Davis, M., & Putnam, H. (1960). A computing procedure for quantification theory. Journal of the ACM, 7(3), 201–215.
Davis, M., Logemann, G., & Loveland, D. (1962). A machine program for theorem-proving. Communications of the ACM, 5(7), 394–397.
Debels, D., & Vanhoucke, M. (2007). A decomposition-based genetic algorithm for the resource-constrained project-scheduling problem. Operations Research, 55(3), 457–469.
Demeulemeester, E. L., & Herroelen, W. S. (1997). New benchmark results for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. Management Science, 43(11), 1485–1492.
Demeulemeester, E. L., & Herroelen, W. S. (2002). Project scheduling: a research handbook. Boston: Kluwer Academic.
Dorndorf, U., Pesch, E., & Phan-Huy, T. (2000a). A branch-and-bound algorithm for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. Mathematical Methods of Operations Research, 52, 413–439.
Dorndorf, U., Pesch, E., & Phan-Huy, T. (2000b). Constraint propagation techniques for the disjunctive scheduling problem. Artificial Intelligence, 122, 189–240.
Dorndorf, U., Pesch, E., & Phan-Huy, T. (2000c). A time-oriented branch-and-bound algorithm for resource-constrained project scheduling with generalised precedence constraints. Management Science, 46(10), 1365–1384.
Eén, N., & Sörensson, N. (2004). An extensible SAT-solver. In Theory and applications of satisfiability testing (pp. 502–518). Berlin: Springer.
Eén, N., & Sörensson, N. (2006). Translating pseudo-Boolean constraints into SAT. Journal on Satisfiability, Boolean Modeling and Computation, 2, 1–26.
Ernst, M. D., Millstein, T. D., & Weld, D. S. (1997). Automatic SAT-compilation of planning problems. In IJCAI (pp. 1169–1177).
Gelder, A. V. (2008). Another look at graph coloring via propositional satisfiability. Discrete Applied Mathematics, 156(2), 230–243.
Gent, I. P. (2002). Arc consistency in SAT. In F. van Harmelen (Ed.), ECAI (pp. 121–125). Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Gomes, C. P., Kautz, H., Sabharwal, A., & Selman, B. (2008). Satisfiability solvers. In Handbook of knowledge representations (pp. 89–132). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Hartmann, S., & Briskorn, D. (2008). A survey of deterministic modeling approaches for project scheduling under resource constraints. Tech. Rep. 2/2008, Hamburg School of Business Administration.
Herroelen, W. (2005). Project scheduling—theory and practice. Production & Operations Management, 14(4), 413–432.
Hooker, J. N. (2007). Relaxation. In Integrated methods for optimization (Vol. 100). New York: Springer.
Igelmund, G., & Radermacher, F. J. (1983a). Algorithmic approaches to preselective strategies for stochastic scheduling problems. Networks, 13, 29–48.
Igelmund, G., & Radermacher, F. J. (1983b). Preselective strategies for the optimization of stochastic project networks under resource constraints. Networks, 13, 1–28.
Klein, R., & Scholl, A. (1999a). Computing lower bounds by destructive improvement: an application to resource-constrained project scheduling. European Journal of Operational Research, 112(2), 322–346.
Klein, R., & Scholl, A. (1999b). Scattered branch and bound: an adaptive search strategy applied to resource-constrained project scheduling. Central European Journal of Operations Research, 7, 177–201.
Kolisch, R., Sprecher, A., & Drexl, A. (1995). Characterization and generation of a general class of resource-constrained project scheduling problems. Management Science, 41, 1693–1703.
Levin, L. (1973). Universal sequential search problem. Problems of Information Transmission, 9, 265–266.
Liess, O., & Michelon, P. (2008). A constraint programming approach for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. Annals of Operations Research, 157, 25–36.
Marques-Silva, J. (2008). Model checking with Boolean satisfiability. Journal of Algorithms, 63(1–3), 3–16.
Marques-Silva, J., & Sakallah, K. A. (1999). GRAPS: a search algorithm for propositional satisfiability. IEEE Transactions on Computers, 48(5), 506–521.
Marques-Silva, J. P., & Lynce, I. (2007). Towards robust CNF encodings of cardinality constraints. In C. Essiere (Ed.), Lecture notes in computer science : Vol. 4741. CP (pp. 483–497). Berlin: Springer.
Mingozzi, A., Maniezzo, V., Ricciardelli, S., & Bianco, L. (1998). An exact algorithm for the resource-constrained project scheduling problem based on a new mathematical formulation. Management Science, 44, 714–729.
Moskewicz, M. W., Madigan, C. F., Zhao, Y., Zhang, L., & Malik, S. (2001). Chaff: engineering an efficient SAT solver. In DAC (pp. 530–535).
Pesch, E., & Tetzlaff, U. A. W. (1996). Constraint propagation based scheduling of job shops. INFORMS Journal on Computing, 8, 144–157.
Sebastiani, R. (2007). Lazy satisfiability modulo theories. Journal on Satisfiability, Boolean Modeling and Computation, 3, 141–224.
Sprecher, A. (2000). Scheduling resource-constrained projects competitively at modest memory requirements. Management Science, 46, 710–723.
Warners, J. P. (1998). A linear-time transformation of linear inequalities into conjunctive normal form. Information Processing Letters, 68(2), 63–69.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Horbach, A. A Boolean satisfiability approach to the resource-constrained project scheduling problem. Ann Oper Res 181, 89–107 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-010-0693-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-010-0693-2