3 Presentations

• 
  02:45 PM - 03:07 PM

  Constraint Programming - A Tutorial

  • Pierre Schaus, presenter, UCLouvain, Belgique

  In this talk, I will provide a concise introduction to Constraint Programming (CP) technology. Given the limited time, I will focus on key aspects, including domain representation, state management and restoration during search, and the implementation of global constraints. I will briefly introduce notions of consistency and present the main global constraints commonly found in CP solvers. Additionally, I will discuss the fundamental principle behind most black-box search methods. Finally, I will show some CP models for well known optimization problems. This introduction is based on MiniCP: http://www.minicp.org.

• 
  03:07 PM - 03:29 PM

  Constraint Programming and Scheduling

  • J. Christopher Beck, presenter, University of Toronto

  Scheduling is one of the most successful problem classes for Constraint Programming (CP) with an increasing number of papers appearing in OR journals as well as in industrial applications. Over the past 20 years, CP researchers have exploited the extensibility of CP to develop scheduling specific variables types and constraints. In this talk, I will introduce interval variables and cumulative functions, demonstrate their use in modeling a single-machine inventory scheduling problem from EJOR 2020, and briefly touch on the underlying solution approaches.

• 
  03:29 PM - 03:51 PM

  Hybrid Optimization: Constraint Programming and Operations Research

  • Willem-Jan van Hoeve, presenter, Carnegie Mellon University

  This presentation discusses the integration of constraint programming with other optimization methods from operations research. Three main streams are considered: 1) global constraint propagation based on combinatorial algorithms such as network flows, 2) optimization-based constraints that embed a linear or Lagrangian relaxation, and 3) decomposition methods including column generation and Benders decomposition. For each of these we will discuss examples and references from the literature.