Reading series

Optimizer for Scheduling

What a scheduling model has to represent, how to read its result, and what public benchmark records show.

Start with chapter one

For planners

  1. The Project Plan That Cannot Happen
  2. Modeling Changeovers in Production Scheduling
  3. Hard and Soft Constraints: Where a Schedule Can Bend
  4. Reading Optimization Results With Confidence
  5. Nineteen years, three hundred tasks, a better schedule

Chapters, in reading order

  1. 01

    The Project Plan That Cannot Happen

    Even a flawless dependency chart can promise work that the team has no capacity to perform.

  2. 02

    Modeling Changeovers in Production Scheduling

    The order of jobs can determine how long a factory spends changing products rather than making them.

  3. 03

    Hard and Soft Constraints: Where a Schedule Can Bend

    The distinction between a rule and a preference tells an optimizer what kind of compromise is possible.

  4. 04

    Reading Optimization Results With Confidence

    A solver's objective value is only part of the story it tells about a result.

  5. 05

    Nineteen years, three hundred tasks, a better schedule

    How 4colors found new answers to a scheduling challenge that has occupied optimization researchers for nearly two decades.

Where this series leads

Optimizer for SchedulingAll articles and guides