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An Efficient Tabu Search Heuristic for the School Timetabling Problem

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Experimental and Efficient Algorithms (WEA 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 3059))

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Abstract

The School Timetabling Problem (STP) regards the weekly scheduling of encounters between teachers and classes. Since this scheduling must satisfy organizational, pedagogical and personal costs, this problem is recognized as a very difficult combinatorial optimization problem. This work presents a new Tabu Search (TS) heuristic for STP. Two different memory-based diversification strategies are presented. Computational experiments with real world instances, in comparison with a previously proposed TS found in literature, show that the proposed method produces better solutions for all instances, as well as observed increased speed in the production of good quality solutions.

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© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Santos, H.G., Ochi, L.S., Souza, M.J.F. (2004). An Efficient Tabu Search Heuristic for the School Timetabling Problem. In: Ribeiro, C.C., Martins, S.L. (eds) Experimental and Efficient Algorithms. WEA 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3059. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24838-5_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24838-5_35

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-22067-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-24838-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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