Article ID: | iaor2006853 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 32 |
Issue: | 7 |
Start Page Number: | 1761 |
End Page Number: | 1776 |
Publication Date: | Jul 2005 |
Journal: | Computers and Operations Research |
Authors: | Santiago-Mozos Ricardo, Salcedo-Sanz Sancho, DePrado-Cumplido Mario, Bousoo-Calzn Carlos |
Keywords: | timetabling, heuristics |
This paper presents, as a case study, the application of a two-phase heuristic evolutionary algorithm to obtain personalized timetables in a Spanish university. The algorithm consists of a two-phase heuristic, which, starting from an initial ordering of the students, allocates students into groups, taking into account the student's preferences as a primal factor for the assignment. An evolutionary algorithm is then used in order to select the ordering of students which provides the best assignment. The algorithm has been tested in a real problem, the timetable of the Telecommunication Engineering School at Universidade de Vigo (Spain), and has shown good performance in terms of the number of constraints fulfilled and groups assigned to students.