Se. Sampson et En. Weiss, DESIGNING CONFERENCES TO IMPROVE RESOURCE UTILIZATION AND PARTICIPANTSATISFACTION, The Journal of the Operational Research Society, 47(2), 1996, pp. 297-314
Citations number
31
Categorie Soggetti
Management,"Operatione Research & Management Science","Operatione Research & Management Science
We look at a conference scheduling problem with the objective of maxim
izing the ability of participants to attend sessions of interest. This
problem was addressed in an article by Eglese and Rand; conference sc
heduling has otherwise received little attention in management science
literature. Related problems of class- and exam-scheduling have been
extensively studied and published, yet few cases consider participant
(e.g. student) preferences. Our formulation, which a variation of that
used by Eglese and Rand, includes prioritized preferences for confere
nce sessions, as well as schedule resource constraints. The purpose of
this paper is to extend the previous work by exploring the impact of
various scheduling decisions on participant satisfaction (measured by
enrollment in desired sessions). We use a previously published algorit
hm to look at issues such as conference length and make general observ
ations that may aid the conference-scheduling decision maker.