Is Scheduling a Solved Problem?
Abstract
In recent years, scheduling research has had an increasing impact on practical problems, and a range of scheduling techniques have made their way into real-world application development. Constraint-based models now couple rich representational flexibility with highly scalable constraint management and search procedures. Similarly, mathematical programming tools are now capable of addressing problems of unprecedented scale, and meta-heuristics provide robust capabilities for schedule optimization. With these mounting successes and advances, it might be tempting to conclude that the chief technical hurdles underlying the scheduling problem have been overcome. However, such a conclusion (at best) presumes a rather narrow and specialized interpretation of scheduling, and (at worst) ignores much of the process and broader context of scheduling in most practical environments. In this note, I argue against this conclusion and outline several outstanding challenges for scheduling research.
An earlier version of this paper appeared in Proceedings GECCO-01 Workshop on The Next 10 Years of Scheduling Research, San Francisco, CA, July 2001
BibTeX
@conference{Smith-2003-120501,author = {S. F. Smith},
title = {Is Scheduling a Solved Problem?},
booktitle = {Proceedings of 1st Multidisciplinary International Conference on Scheduling Theory and Applications (MISTA '03)},
year = {2003},
month = {September},
pages = {3 - 17},
}