Abstract
Recently, Gargani and Refalo (G&R) presented an elegant model for the Steel Mill Slab Design Problem (Problem 38 in the CSP LIB). Contrary to earlier approaches, their model does not use 0/1 variables but exploits the traditional expressiveness of constraint programming. G&R indicated that static symmetry-breaking constraints proposed earlier are not effective on this model, as these interact with their heuristic. Instead they use large neighborhood search to obtain solutions quickly. This paper shows that a simple search procedure breaking symmetries dynamically leads to a constraint program solving the problem in a few seconds, while maintaining the completeness of the approach and removing the need for large neighborhood search.
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Van Hentenryck, P., Michel, L. (2008). The Steel Mill Slab Design Problem Revisited. In: Perron, L., Trick, M.A. (eds) Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimization Problems. CPAIOR 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5015. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68155-7_41
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68155-7_41
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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