Scheduling of continuous processes using constraint-based search: An application to Branch and Bound

In this work a Branch and Bound approach based on constraint-based search (CBS) is proposed to the scheduling of continuous processes. The purpose of this work is to extend to continuous processes a CBS approach proposed previously to batch production (Rodrigues et al., 2000). Tasks' time-windows are submitted to a constraint propagation procedure (CBS) that identifies existing orderings among tasks. Linear programming is used to determine the optimal flow rate for each bucket whenever all buckets are ordered in the branch and bound.