General tab

• An initial objective value is established. Therefore, solutions that are worse than the current solution on the planning board are not returned by the solver.
• If you select solve via local search, an initial solution is required before a better solution can be found. To define an initial solution, you can select solve current schedule.

Whether a solution has been found or not by the first step, the joining of the batches on the planning board is tried in the direction that is specified for the solver setting as soon as possible. Therefore, gaps are removed and small overlaps in batches are fixed. The current sequence phase is required before a solution that is better or equal than the first solution can be found.

A solution better than the solution that is found by the first two steps, if any, is searched. All possible sequences of batches on all possible resources are tried. If a sequence has a better objective value than the current best solution, the new solution is retained and a better solution is searched. You can click Stop to stop the search process. A time limit or another limit that is defined as an abort criterium is reached, for example, the local search start time.

The solve all sequences search phase is aborted by this search phase after the number of seconds that you have specified or, if solution is not found after this time, later. In this case, as soon as a solution is found by the previous step, the search is started again. With this option, a solution can be searched without all sequences being systematically tried using other rules. If you do not specify a time limit in the Configuration tab, this phase usually aborts after a few hours, when the solution cannot be improved anymore using any of the available rules. To improve the performance, you can run the search for a night. It is recommended that you use this search when better solution is not found using the solve all sequences option. The default time limit for starting is 20 seconds by default, however the time limit can be modified. In some cases, using this search, you cannot find a solution or you require a solution that adheres to the default strategy that is used in the third step. For example, sequence priority batches rules. In the latter case, you can clear this check box. The minimum improvement next better solution setting is not considered by this search phase and the first step is always used.