Southwest Airlines Co.

Alex Michael Heinold

Ranga Anbil

Methods and systems, including systems for implementing computer software, use constraint programming to generate a schedule for transportation resources. A constraint propagation algorithm is used to eliminate invalid schedule options based on a first set of constraints in a network of transportation resources. Execution of the constraint propagation algorithm generates a reduced set of schedule options. A backtracking constraint programming algorithm and the reduced set of schedule options are then used to generate at least one proposed schedule. The backtracking algorithm is operable to select particular schedule options from the reduced set of schedule options based on a second set of constraints.

Constraint-based schedule generation for transportation resources

Techniques for refining a schedule involve identifying schedule alternatives to an original schedule and generating one or more substitute schedules using one or more of the schedule alternatives. An objective function is used to perform an analysis of the original schedule and the one or more substitute schedules, and a refined schedule is selected based on the analysis.

Generating and tuning an allocation of transportation resources

A schedule for a network of transportation resources is produced by generating a proposed schedule that satisfies at least one predefined constraint using constraint programming. Multiple schedule alternatives including the proposed schedule and at least one alternative to the proposed schedule are identified, and the schedule alternatives are analyzed using an objective function to identify a refined schedule.

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Carrollton, TX, United States of America

Alex Michael Heinold