9404320 Pinedo This Americas Program award will fund Dr. Michael Pinedo, Columbia University, in a joint collaboration with Dr. Miguel Nussbaum, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, to design and develop a modular, flexible, general purpose scheduling environment. The aim of the project is to refine and extend a variety of known theoretical results and algorithms for scheduling problems, and develop techniques for combining the procedures into one framework suitable for implementation. The resulting framework will then be incorporated into an interactive, object-oriented system. The research is based on problem decomposition; i.e., dividing the scheduling problem into a number of sub- problems and then aggregating the results obtained into a comprehensive global solution of the original problem. The project will be a significant contribution to scheduling education, as well as industrial practice. During the last decade many industries have attempted to develop, design and implement scheduling systems for their operations, but have not always been successful because the systems were not sufficiently flexible, and not able to adapt easily to changing objectives and constraints. The development of a tool to classify and successfully decompose any scheduling problem will be of great benefit to users of scheduling models. The collaboration will profit from the complementary strengths of both scientists and institutions. Columbia University has an established record in scheduling theory and applications, while Universidad Catolica has extensive experience in the design and development of scheduling systems. ***
