ENCODING OF A SCHEDULE INTO A BINARY STRUCTURE

A method determines a schedule indicator value for each of a plurality of schedule data entries based on whether each of a set of recorded tasks has been allocated to one or more identifier data names in one or more of a set of time periods in accordance with the first schedule data to generate schedule portion data. A hard constraint indicator value is determined for each of a plurality of hard constraint data entries based on whether at least one hard constraint has been violated by the allocation of the set of recorded tasks to one or more of the identifier data names in one or more of the time periods in accordance with the schedule data to generate hard constraint portion data. The data structure is generated based on the determined schedule portion and hard constraint portion data encoding the schedule data into a data structure.