Answer Set Programming for Flexible Payroll Management
This addresses the need for adaptable payroll systems for businesses facing complex and varying rules, though it is incremental as it applies existing ASP techniques to a specific domain.
The paper tackled the problem of flexible payroll management by proposing an Answer Set Programming (ASP) model with a tabular DMN representation, enabling HR consultants to design payroll systems without software engineers and achieving performance suitable for real-world instances using multi-shot solving.
Payroll management is a critical business task that is subject to a large number of rules, which vary widely between companies, sectors, and countries. Moreover, the rules are often complex and change regularly. Therefore, payroll management systems must be flexible in design. In this paper, we suggest an approach based on a flexible Answer Set Programming (ASP) model and an easy-to-read tabular representation based on the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard. It allows HR consultants to represent complex rules without the need for a software engineer, and to ultimately design payroll systems for a variety of different scenarios. We show how the multi-shot solving capabilities of the clingo ASP system can be used to reach the performance that is necessary to handle real-world instances.