JPH03282736A - Constraint input system - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a constraint input method, and particularly to a constraint input method for the purpose of creating a schedule.

[Conventional technology]

Specific examples of schedules include production schedule planning and work assignments to employees.

Conventionally, when creating a schedule, in order to create a high-quality schedule, the method of selecting a combination of resources and tasks that satisfies highly important constraints has been broken.
The importance of the constraint was determined by giving an eigenvalue that relied on the intuition of the constraint extractor.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

The above-mentioned determination of the importance of constraints is an eigenvalue determined only by the intuition of the constraint extractor, so it is very difficult to check the consistency of the importance of constraints as a whole system, and it is difficult to confirm the consistency of the importance of constraints as a whole. When adding or changing the importance level, the importance level must be determined by referring to the importance levels of all constraints, which has the disadvantage that it is impossible to guarantee consistency. .

[Means to solve the problem]

The constraint input method of the present invention selects and combines resources and tasks, which are individual combination elements, based on evaluation criteria based on the importance of the constraints and the satisfaction status of the constraints expressing the target condition, and performs the operation. In an information processing system that creates a schedule by repeating the process, the system includes: a constraint item input unit that inputs constraints regarding the resources and tasks and constraints regarding the conditions of their combination; a constraint management unit that collectively manages the input constraints; A constraint importance determining unit that determines the importance of constraints that are input by the department and managed collectively by an integrated comparison of the importance between two constraints, and a constraint importance determining unit that confirms the consistency of the determined constraint importance. The apparatus is configured to include a consistency confirmation section, and a constraint importance adjustment section that can refer to a list of importance values determined by the constraint importance determination section and change the values through user operations.

〔Example〕

Next, the present invention will be explained with reference to the drawings.

Referring to FIG. 1, one embodiment of the present invention is comprised of a constraint input means], a constraint management means 2, and a schedule creation means 3. Furthermore, the constraint input means] includes a constraint item input unit 4, a constraint importance level determination unit 5, and a constraint importance level consistency confirmation unit 6.
and a constraint importance adjustment section 7.

The constraint item input unit 4 inputs constraints such as resources and tasks using dedicated input means.

The constraints entered here are centrally managed by the constraint management means 2.

Next, the constraint importance determination unit 5 obtains a list of constraints by the constraint management unit 2 in step S1. Next, in step S2, it is determined whether there is a constraint whose importance level has not been determined,
If there are no undetermined constraints, the constraint importance determining unit 5 is terminated.

If there are any undetermined constraints, in step S3, constraints whose importance level is to be determined are extracted. If an undetermined constraint exists, a pairwise comparison of importance with other constraints is performed in step S4. First, determine the constraint that will be the basis of comparison, and then determine the relative weight of that constraint relative to other constraints, such as ``very important,'' ``somewhat important,'' or [same importance]. do.

In this way, the relative importance between all constraints is determined. Determine the importance value based on the weights between all constraints. Regarding the importance determination method here, a method based on the hierarchical decision-making method is applied.

Furthermore, the constraint importance consistency confirmation unit 6 can confirm how much consistency is guaranteed with respect to the importance values by the constraint importance determination unit 5.

Here, if sufficient consistency cannot be obtained, the comparison can be performed again, or the constraint importance adjustment unit 7 can change the importance value to a specified value.

Figure 3 shows a rough ranking of importance, and the constraints are checked by the constraint importance consistency confirmation unit 6, apart from cases where each constraint is [mutually independent] and [no consideration required]. [Very important 1 “Somewhat important”
``If I were to summarize one constraint that is equally important, it would be summarized in the shaded area.

Next, by passing information on the constraints input by the constraint input means from the constraint management means 2 to the schedule creation means 3, the schedule creation means 3 processes the schedule creation while referring to the value of the importance of the constraints. It can be performed.

Next, the operation of this embodiment will be specifically explained.

In the schedule creation system shown in Figure 1, the value of the importance of a constraint is in the range from 1 to 100. 6 A constraint with an importance of 100 is a constraint that must be satisfied, and the value becomes smaller. Accordingly, the degree of need to be satisfied decreases. Furthermore, when selecting a combination of resources and tasks, the sum of the importance levels of the satisfied constraints is calculated and the combination that yields the maximum value is selected. Assume that this system is given six constraints as shown in FIG. 3, for example. These constraints are first input into the system by the constraint item input unit 1.

The constraints entered here are managed in list form and their importance levels are managed by the constraint management means 2. Here, the constraint] is
This is a constraint that must be satisfied, and the importance value has already been set to 10.
It is known that 0 is taken, and it is possible to input the value of importance using the constraint importance adjustment section 7. Therefore,
It is necessary to determine the importance of the remaining five constraints.

Therefore, when the constraint importance determining unit 5 is activated, the system selects two constraints to be compared, and the user inputs their relative weights. The user focuses only on the two constraints presented by the system and determines the weight between the constraints. By performing the above operations on all combinations of constraints, the relative alignment of all constraints can be determined. Furthermore, the present system requires converting this relative correlation into an absolute importance value from 1 to 100. - As an intra-membrane conversion method, the maximum constraint weight value corresponds to 99, and the minimum weight value corresponds to 1
However, the distribution of this importance value,
For example, if the weight is biased from 50 to 99, it is also possible to make the maximum weight constraint correspond to 99 and the minimum weight value to correspond to 50.

Furthermore, the constraint importance consistency confirmation unit 6 can determine how consistent the importance values determined in this way are. The degree of consistency is quantified, and the closer it is to 0, the better the consistency is, that is, the more consistent the weights between constraints are. Furthermore, if the degree of consistency obtained here is significantly different from O, it is also possible to redo the pairwise comparison process or to directly change the value determined by the system using the constraint importance adjustment unit 7. be.

Based on the constraint strength determined through the above operations, the schedule creation means 6 performs actual schedule creation processing. When combining resources for one task, the schedule creation means 3 selects one resource from a plurality of resources. First, the schedule creation means 3 selects an evaluation score of how well each resource satisfies the constraints in terms of the constraints. is given, and resources are actually selected according to the overall evaluation score obtained from the constraint strength and this evaluation score.

In the case of scheduling systems, adjusting the importance of constraints is an important item regarding schedule quality, and in the system debugging process, it is often necessary to revise the importance of constraints in order to improve schedule quality. It is being said. In this system, the constraint importance adjustment unit 7 can easily change the importance value for this revision work. Furthermore, if there is a mistake in the weights between constraints, the importance levels of all constraints can be reset by re-performing only the relevant weights. Also, consider not only changing operations regarding constraints that have already been input, but also the case of adding new constraints. In this case, a pair of shark operations is performed between each of the newly input constraints and the constraints that have already been input to the system. As a result, it is now possible to set the importance level among seven constraints, whereas the importance level was previously set among six constraints.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, the present invention improves the efficiency of inputting constraints that are conditions for creating schedules, and facilitates operations such as adding constraints and changing importance when debugging a system. It has the effect of

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a schedule creation information processing system according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a diagram that does not show the processing outline of the constraint importance determination means, and FIG. Figure shown. 1... Constraint input means, 2... Constraint management means, 3...
・Schedule creation means, 4... constraint item input means,
5... Constraint importance determining means, 6... Constraint importance consistency checking means, 7... Constraint importance level 31M' linking means.

Claims (1)

[Claims] Select and combine resources and tasks, which are individual combination elements, based on evaluation criteria based on the importance of constraints and the satisfaction status of constraints expressing target conditions, and repeat the operation. In an information processing system that creates a schedule using A constraint importance determination unit that determines the importance of input and collectively managed constraints by comparing the importance of two constraints, and a constraint importance consistency check that checks the consistency of the determined constraint importance. The present invention is characterized by comprising a confirmation unit, and a constraint importance adjustment unit that refers to a list of importance values determined by the constraint importance determination unit and can change the values through user operations. Constraint input method.