Case-based reasoning in scheduling: reusing solution components

In this paper we explore the reuse of components of known good schedules in new scheduling problems. This involves accumulating a case-base of good quality schedules, retrieving a case (or cases) similar to a new scheduling problem and building a new schedule from components of the retrieved cases. We start by introducing the components of case-based reasoning' (CBR) and we describe a CBR solution to a 'travelling salesman problem' in order to illustrate the use of CBR in optimization problems Two CBR solutions to a single machine scheduling problem with sequence dependent setup times are described: These are evaluated by comparing them with two more conventional alternative techniques-simulated annealed and myopic search. Both CBR techniques are shown to provide good quality solutions quickly.