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Is it possible with Timefold to unschedule one or more variables. For example for vehicle routing I want to set up a start date and an end date and if an intervention is scheduled after the end date then it will be unscheduled in my solution, i.e. it will not will be associated with no vehicle and will have no lap time.

  • If it's possible directly during Timefold resolution how can I do it?
  • And if it's not possible do I have to go through post resolution processing.
  • Do I need to change my solver configuration?
BrayanMa
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1 Answers1

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In my opinion, you are looking for over-constrained planning. It allows you to specify that assigning a value is optional. So, the solver may leave some "interventions" unassigned.

There are some caveats, though:

  • It may still schedule something past the planning window, and in that case you may have to do post-processing, but if the penalty is high enough, those won't happen frequently, or at all.
  • It may create unassigned visits within the planning window. That also needs to be dealt with through constraints.
  • Since you specifically mention vehicle routing, you may run into a limitation that over-constrained planning is not supported on planning list variable. (It is on our roadmap, though.) If that is the case, you'll have to implement a workaround using a dummy vehicle.

Generally, I'd suggest you let the solver assign anything it can, even outside of the planning window. See continuous planning.

Lukáš Petrovický
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