Operating Room Scheduling via Answer Set Programming

The Operating Room Scheduling (ORS) problem is the task of assigning patients to operating rooms, taking in account different specialties, the surgery and operating room shift durations and different priorities. Given that Answer Set Programming (ASP) has been recently employed for solving real-life scheduling and planning problems, in this paper we first present an off-line solution based on ASP for solving the ORS problem. Then, we present techniques for re-scheduling on-line in case the off-line schedule can not be fully applied. Results of an experimental analysis conducted on benchmarks with realistic sizes and parameters show that ASP is a suitable solving methodology also for the ORS problem.