Scheduling and Packing

Obtaining optimal solutions for scheduling problems can still be a challenging task, even for small-size instances. Sophisticated bounding techniques and dominance rules are therefore vital ingredients for the development of tailored Branch-and-Bound algorithms. Further enhancements can be achieved by integrating predictive analytics, in order to decide which optimization components to run on which kinds of problems, for example. In addition to that, the analogy between packing problems and multiprocessor scheduling with unit-time tasks considerably extends the scope of optimization methods from both fields.