Development of a tool to schedule school timetabling through linear programming

Published in: Engineering, Integration, and Alliances for a Sustainable Development. Hemispheric Cooperation for Competitiveness and Prosperity on a Knowledge-Based Economy: Proceedings of the 18th LACCEI International Multi-Conference for Engineering, Education and Technology
Date of Conference: July 27-31, 2020
Location of Conference: Virtual
Authors: Delmy Pérez (Unitec Tegucigalpa, HN)
Full Paper: #104

Abstract:

School timetabling is a complex activity that involves investing long hours of work, because of the different variables and constraints that are involved, and it must be done for each new school year. This research aimed to improve the time invested in timetabling at HS school through linear programming. Where four binary linear programming models were created, one for each educational stage obtaining a feasible solution in OpenSolver for each one, executing 109,920 constraints in total. Afterwards, a tool was developed in Excel to generate the timetabling automatically, which can be used by any user without having prior knowledge of linear programming. By making use of the tool, the timetable is done in 1.37 hours, reducing the time invested by 89.46% compared to the current situation.