Pattern-based models and a cooperative parallel metaheuristic for high school timetabling problems

Landir Saviniec, Maristela O. Santos, Alysson M. Costa and Lana M.R. dos Santos

European Journal of Operational Research, 2020, vol. 280, issue 3, 1064-1081

Abstract: High school timetabling problems consist in building periodic timetables for class-teacher meetings considering compulsory and non-compulsory requirements. This family of problems has been widely studied since the 1950s, mostly via mixed-integer programming and metaheuristic techniques. However, the efficient search of optimal or near-optimal solutions is still a challenge for many problems of practical size. In this paper, we investigate mixed-integer programming formulations and a parallel metaheuristic based algorithm for solving high school timetabling problems with compactness and balancing requirements. We propose two pattern-based formulations and a solution algorithm that simultaneously exploits column generation and a team of metaheuristics to build and improve solutions. Extensive computational experiments conducted with real-world instances demonstrate that our formulations are competitive with the best existing high school timetabling formulations, while our parallel algorithm presents superior performance to alternative methods available in the literature.

Keywords: Timetabling; Parallel metaheuristics; Column generation; Iterated local search (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:280:y:2020:i:3:p:1064-1081

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2019.08.001

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