A HYBRID METHOD FOR SOLVING TIMETABLING PROBLEMS BASED ON THE EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH

Abstract

Timetabling problems are often difficult and time-consuming to solve. Most of the methods of solving these problems are limited to one problem instance or class. This paper describes a universal method for solving large, highly constrained timetabling problems in various domains. The solution is based on an evolutionary algorithm framework and employs tabu search to quicken the solution finding process. Hyper-heuristics are used to establish the algorithm’s operating parameters. The method has been used to solve three timetabling problems with promising results of extensive experiments.