Study on application possibilities of Case-Based Reasoning on the domain of scheduling problems

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to work out the foundations of a decision-support system in order to advise efficient resolution strategies for scheduling problems in process engineering. This decision-support system is based on Case-Based Reasoning. A bibliographic study based on co-citation analysis has been performed in order to extract knowledge from the literature and obtain a landscape about scheduling research, its intensity and evolution. An open classification scheme has been proposed to scheduling problems, mathematical models and solving methods. A notation scheme corresponding to the classification has been elaborated based on the nomenclature proposed by Blazewicz et al. (2007). The difficulties arising during the adaptation of a mathematical model to different problems is discussed, and the performances of four literature mathematical models have been compared on three flow-shop examples. A resolution strategy is proposed based on the characteristics of the scheduling problem.