UNIVERSITY TIMETABLING BY CONSTRAINT-BASED REASONING - A CASE-STUDY

This paper presents a case-study which applies constraint-based reason ing to university timetable planning. The timetabling problem is formu lated as a constraint satisfaction model and this model is solved usin g constrained-directed search algorithms with built-in forward checkin g and constraint propagation. The model and algorithms were tested wit h real data containing 536 lessons to be scheduled into 45 timeslots a nd 21 rooms. The solution to the problem was obtained with minimal com puting effort and processing time. This study showed that modelling an d remodelling could be carried out easily through a proposed parameter ised model formulation. The proposed approach has also successfully ma ximised room utilisation and minimised the number of timeslots require d to deliver all the lectures. This finding may facilitate the widespr ead implementation of automated timetabling systems to larger scale pr oblems and a wider variety of application domains.