Tractable constraints on ordered domains
Artificial Intelligence
Human-centred Intelligent Systems and Soft Computing
BT Technology Journal
Solving Vehicle Routing Problems Using Constraint Programming and Metaheuristics
Journal of Heuristics
Building tractable disjunctive constraints
Journal of the ACM (JACM)
New tractable constraint classes from old
Exploring artificial intelligence in the new millennium
Designing Coordination Systems for Distributed Teamwork
WETICE '03 Proceedings of the Twelfth International Workshop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises
BT Technology Journal
Individual workforce scheduling architecture: a case study at KT
CSNA '07 Proceedings of the IASTED International Conference on Communication Systems, Networks, and Applications
Congruence Distributivity Implies Bounded Width
SIAM Journal on Computing
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Provision of service to business and residential customers, network maintenance and fault repair are core activities of large telecommunications companies which involve thousands of technicians every day. Managing a large-sized workforce efficiently in a highly dynamic environment is a challenge that BT has addressed by automating its work management processes within a single application known as Work Manager. For the most part, the success of Work Manager rests upon the ability of its work allocation component in determining the best assignments at any time and in any environment.This paper presents a scheduler for Work Manager which is both predictive and reactive and whose computational model reconciles genericity and efficiency. Coupling Constraint Satisfaction and Local Search, this scheduler can generate long-term schedules that satisfy the conflicting objectives of feasibility, productivity, quality of service and cost minimisation. It also provides the capability to adjust schedules before despatch through on-line heuristic repair/improvement. Equipped with a powerful interface, this system has been successfully trialled within the field and is now deployed nationally.