Constraint Satisfaction Problems: Algorithms and Applications.

A constraint satisfaction problem requires a value, selected from a given finite domain, to be assigned to each variable in the problem, so that all constraints relating the variables are satisfied. Many combinatorial problems in operational research, such as schedulling and timetabling, can be formulated as constraint satisfaction problems. Researchers in artificial intelligence usually adopt a constaint satisfaction approach as their prefererd method when tackling such problems. However constraint satisfaction approches are not widely known amongst operational researchers. The aim of this paper is to introduce constraint statisfaction to the operational researchers.