Applying Intelligent Algorithms in Solving Hard Timetabling Problems

Timetabling problems are extremely difficult problems, which have long resisted computerized techniques. Even if the recent research has been very promising, a wide variety of practical applications are still waiting for good solutions to be found. Examples of such applications are educational timetabling, transport timetabling, employee timetabling and rostering, sports timetabling and production scheduling.

In our study we have found excellent results for school timetabling problems. We have also studied employee and industry timetabling. Our current timetabling research concentrates on sports timetabling. The implemented applications have successfully scheduled round-robin tournaments for major sport leagues in Finland. The three key factors of success have been:

• Intelligent use of genetic algorithms and local search heuristics
• Very efficient program code
• The most efficient computers nowadays are fast enough.

RESEARCH PARTNERS

University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
University of Sydney, Australia
Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium 
Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
Fluminense Federal University, Brazil
Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Brazil
University of Chile, Chile
De Montfort University, England
Christian-Albrechts-Universität of Kiel, Germany
University of Patras, Greece
Reykjavik University, Iceland
University of Udine, Italy
University of Leiden, Netherlands
University of Twente, Netherlands

More information: , 

Read more: Sports Scheduling Problem, School Timetabling Problem ja Benchmarking project for School Timetabling

Publication list (PDF)