A computational study of local search algorithms for Italian high-school timetabling

In this paper we report on a computational experience with a local search algorithm for High-school Timetabling Problems. The timetable has to satisfy ‘hard’ requirements, that are mandatory, and should minimize the violation of ‘soft’ constraints. In our approach, we combine Simulated Annealing with a Very Large-Scale Neighborhood search where the neighborhood is explored by solving an Integer Programming problem. We report on a computational experience validating the usefulness of the proposed approach.