Feasible distributed CSP models for scheduling problems

A distributed constraint satisfaction problem (DisCSP) is a CSP in which variables and constraints are distributed among multiple automated agents. Many researchers have developed techniques for solving DisCSPs. They assume for simplicity that each agent has exactly one variable. For real planning and scheduling problems, these techniques require a large number of messages passing among agents, so these problems are very difficult to solve. In this paper, we present a general distributed model for solving real-life scheduling problems. This distributed model is based on the idea of holonic systems. Furthermore, we propose some guidelines for distributing large-scale problems. Finally, we present two case studies in which two scheduling problems are distributed by using our model.