Assigning Resources to Constrained Activities

Resource allocation problems are naturaly represented as constraint networks (CN), with constraints of inequality among activities that compete for the same resources at the same time 4]. A new algorithm for solving networks of RAPs is described and its detailed behavior is presented on a small example and on a real world problem. The proposed algorithm delays assignments of resources to selected activities and processes the network during the assignment procedure, to select delays and values. The proposed algorithm is an enhancement to standard intelligent backtracking algorithms 9], is complete and performs better than two former approaches to solving constraints networks of resource allocation (cf. 10, 2, 3]). One way to view the new resource assignment algorithm (RAA) is in the form of a dynamic variable ordering heuristic. The differences between RAA and former preprocessing heuristic methods for resource allocation problems is discussed in the context of a simple example and a realistic problem of employee assignment.