Cost Function

The cost function measures the quality of the current schedule and generally involves the weighted sum of penalties associated with different types of constraint violations. Summing these penalties or costs is not strictly necessary, provided that the components (individual costs) can be combined in some fashion to reflect the overall quality of the schedule. Let C be the set of the given constraints. A <#364#>feasible<#364#> schedule is defined as a schedule that satisfies the set of hard constraints #tex2html_wrap_inline1666#, where #tex2html_wrap_inline1668#. We consider the following as part of the abovementioned cost function: