Constraint-Based Task Scheduling with Sequence Dependent Setup Times, Time Windows and Breaks

The work presented in this article generalizes the modeling of task scheduling problems with sequence dependent setup time on the basis of task scheduling on single respectively exclusive resources: Besides working activities also work breaks are respected properly which is formally proven. The additional contribution of this article is an effective pruning algorithm according to the presented modeling approach. Benchmark examinations show that the introduced modeling and pruning approach is comparable with another state-of-the-art constraint-based approach. Within these examination the optimality of a lower bound of one benchmark instance, namely of t2-ps09, is proven – to the best of one’s knowledge – the first time.