Overview of planning and scheduling technologies

The objective of this paper is to present an overview of the main families of existing scheduling/planning methodologies. At present, these consist of rule-based approaches, randomized based search based methods such as genet ic algorithms and simulated annealing, AI-related methods such as constrain t-based reasoning, simulation approaches, and mathematical programming base d methods. The advantages and disadvantages of these methodologies will be critically assessed and caveats to be observed in their application reviewe d. Particular attention will be directed to mathematical programming based approaches that employ mixed integer linear programming formulations. The m ain alternative formulations will be reviewed, the manner in which their so lution is expedited summarized, and their relative strengths and weaknesses discussed. Finally, a prognosis will be given of trends for the future.