CProS: A web-based application for chemical production scheduling

While a large range of models and methods have been proposed in the literature for chemical production scheduling, very limited tools are available for researchers to test these methods. This communication describes a web-based application (CProS) that was recently developed to facilitate the generation and solution of chemical production scheduling instances. The application offers an interface through which a user can define an instance using the state-task network (STN) representation. Given an instance, the application then automatically generates a discrete-time STN-based mixed-integer linear programming (MIP) model. In addition, the user has the option to use three different solution methods: (1) tightening constraints; (2) a reformulation; and (3) a three-stage discrete-continuous algorithm. We showcase the functionality of the application through a case study.