The VOCAL Project (ESPRIT #23182):
Validation Of
Constraint programming through an Application in Logistics
Introduction
Some everyday tasks faced by industrial applications involve hard,
highly combinatorial problems, like scheduling, resource allocation
and planning. Their difficulty stems not only from their intrinsic
complexity, but also from the need of being able to easily model them,
and to quickly change them as the environment and the market
conditions evolve, while ensuring the correctness of the model and its
suitability for the goals of the company. These problems are difficult
to address correctly using conventional programming
techniques. Constraint Programming (CP) is an emerging technology
which provides a general framework for efficient and flexible solving
of complex problems, through combined implementation of various
constraint solvers.
Aims
The VOCAL Trial Application aims at proving that CP technology can be
exploited by companies from all industrial sectors, and that the
resulting applications can be fully integrated within their corporate
information system. This goal may be further divided into two main
objectives: first, based on a logistic problem encountered by a large
utility company, the CP technology will be introduced into their
global information system through a local software development
company, and will be used to solve it; second, the expertise acquired
during the design, development and integration process will be used by
the partners to improve the previous training seminars. This will
produce a final result which, in the form of guidelines for
industrial- oriented constraint programming and training seminars,
will be used to disseminate the experience gained within the project
to ease the introduction of CP technologies in other software
companies.
The application dealt with in this project comes from the field of
maintenance logistics for utility companies (more specifically for the
distribution of electricity). The main problem is here to allocate the
available resources (both human and technical) to the various
maintenance operations to be performed on the network. In particular,
the project will focus on the handling of planned preventive
maintenance together with more urgent maintenance. CP is appropriate
for the resolution of such problems, in particular since it provides a
simple and general framework for the modelling of the application.
The project extends over an 18-months period. The work is divided into
three major stages, following the CP development cycle: specifications
of the application, design and prototyping, and integration.
Partners
The consortium is made of 4 partners:
- Iberdrola
(E), the largest utility company in Spain, who aims at improving one
of its main applications in relation to the maintenance logistic
system.
- SAGE (E), the Spanish
subsidiary of Software A.G. (D), one of the largest software companies
in Europe, who aims at improving its knowledge on CP and including it
in its technological offer.
- PrologIA (F), the
technology provider, who aims at validating its CP technology through
the development of the Trial Application.
- UPM (E), who already
participated in the development of PrologIA's CP products, and who
aims at improving the tutoring process for CP technologies.
Iberdrola will act as the end-user, SAGE as the emerging technology
user and software developer, PrologIA as technology provider, and UPM
as consultant and leader of the training part of the project.
Exploitation
The results of the project will be exploited separately by the
partners: Iberdrola's goal is to improve the organisation of their
maintenance logistics, by introducing some decision-aid tools in their
existing information system. SAGE's goal is to assess the relevance of
the CP technology for the resolution of the problems of their clients,
and to integrate it in their technological offer if the result is
successful. PrologIA's goal is to get an assessment of their
technology, and to get a practical experience of its introduction in a
software development company. Finally, UPM's goal is to gain some
further experience in the development of practical CP applications, to
develop a training seminar suited to the needs of the industrial
world, and to identify relevant future research problems as a result
of user experiences with the technology.
Public Documents
The documents publicly available have been posted here. More documents can be added
in a future.
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Last modified: Thu Dec 3 11:11:20 1998