More Advanced Problem Modeling with Concert Technology

The aim of the following example is to demonstrate some advanced problem modeling techniques using Concert Technology. In addition to activities and resources, Solver variables and constraints are used to represent the problem. Non-deterministic functions from Solver are then used to search for an optimal solution.

The problem is to assign each activity to a start time and to a specific worker (chosen among a set of workers able to perform the activity) taking care of the fact that the same worker cannot perform two activities at the same time.

Two optimization criteria are considered: either minimize the maximal or the average amount of time spent by each worker on the site, given that a worker cannot leave the site between two activities. By default, we will assume that the maximal amount of time spent by each worker should be minimized. However, we'll use -minimizeSum, an optional argument to the main program, to specify that the sum (or, equivalently, the average value) of the amounts of time spent must be minimized.