Flexible versus fixed timetabling: a case study

This case study presents the timetabling problem of the Flight Training Department at Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University. The problem consists of scheduling the flight resources to students to various time blocks. This problem represents a well-studied field in operations research, mainly adopting variations of mathematical programming models. This paper initially presents the efforts towards developing a fixed timetable using optimization models for the case under study. It is, however, demonstrated that implementation of optimum solutions obtained using this approach cannot be sustained, mainly because of the dynamic nature of the governing parameters. A flexible and dynamic timetable utilizing the university computer network, allowing the instructors and students to make their own decentralized flexible timetables, is proposed. A simulation study is initiated to compare the performance measures under both timetables. The analysis shows that implementation of a flexible system generates higher utilization of flight resources as well as improving key performance measures.