Objective: Minimize disruption

Use the minimize disruption objective to prioritize jobs that already have a specific resource assigned to them.

Overview

The concept of minimizing disruption revolves around jobs that already have a specific resource assigned to them. These assignments could be due to various factors, such as prior knowledge, expertize, or operational requirements.

Maintaining the assigned resources is a significant factor when working with pre-existing/tentative schedules. For example, if a rough schedule is created early and optimization fine-tunes the schedule with updated data.

This constraint minimizes disruption in schedules that are already partially defined. For empty schedules, it has no impact.

Assigning weight to the minimize disruption objective

When weight is assigned to this objective, it signifies the importance of keeping the job assigned to the original resource, even if the optimizer identifies a potentially more optimal resource for the task. In other words, the weight acts as a constraint, instructing the optimizer to prioritize the assigned resource, regardless of potential alternatives.

The weight assigned to assigned resources is relative to the other objectives. For example, if the weight assigned to minimizing disruption is 20, and the weight assigned to balance workload is 60, the optimizer will prioritize balancing workload over minimizing disruption.

Assigning no weight to the minimize disruption objective

In the absence of a weight assigned to minimize disruption, the optimizer gains the freedom to potentially replace the assigned resource with another, potentially better-suited resource based on other defined objectives. This allows the optimizer to optimize scheduling outcomes without constraints related to specific resource assignments, providing more flexibility in achieving overall optimization.