The Naval Postgraduate School scheduling system: a heuristic approach

A heuristic approach is presented to solve the Naval Postgraduate School's quarterly scheduling problem for academic courses and final examinations. The current scheduling system is studied and an automated system for data collection is developed and implemented. An automated system for the scheduling of final examinations is designed and implemented. Results using real data from one quarter produced feasible solutions to the final examination scheduling problem of 1700 students, 267 courses and 850 sections. The academic course scheduling heuristic is discussed including an integer linear programming approach to the timetabling and distribution problem of students among segments of the same course. An example with an optimal solution to the single course scheduling problem is presented. http://archive.org/details/thenavalpostgrad1094521459 Captain, German Army Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.