An Effective Local Particle Swarm Optimization-Based Algorithm for Solving the School Timetabling Problem

Abstract

This paper deals with the school timetabling problem. The problem was formulated as encountered in a typical Greek high school. A local version of the particle swarm optimization algorithm was developed and applied to the problem at hand. Results on well-established benchmark instances showed that the proposed algorithm achieved the proven optima provided from an integer programming method presented in earlier research. In almost all cases, the current algorithm beat the integer programming method, either concerning the lower bound yielded or the execution time needed.