A LANGUAGE FOR DESCRIBING PROCESS SCHEDULING PROBLEMS

In this paper, we define the language RCSPec for expressing process sc heduling problems and describe a scheme for parsing and then translati ng the language to a mathematical programming formulation. The goal of RCSPec is to provide a compact, intuitive, and context independent me ans of representing the wide variety of process scheduling problems th at arise in the chemical/pharmaceutical industry. In practice, RCSPec allows for rapid modification of problem features, promotes detection of ill-posed scenarios, and can serve as a vehicle for expressing stan dard test problems on which researchers can compare results. As an exa mple of its application, several problems from the literature are expr essed and computational results are presented for parsing and translat ing their descriptions to a formulation based on time discretization. RCSPec is independent of the formulation into which it is translated s o that alternative formulation/solution strategies may be applied to t he same problem description. Supporting additional formulations involv es modifying the translation process, whereas parsing is unaffected. A library of test problems expressed in RCSPec, problem file error chec king code, and information about RCSPec version updates are electronic ally available. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.