Genetic Algorithms: A New Approach to the Timetable Problem

Abstract

In this paper we present the results of a research relative to the ascertainment of limits and potentials of genetic algorithms [4, 3, 6] in addressing highly constrained optimization problems, where a minimal change to a feasible solution is very likely to yield an infeasible one. As a test problem, we have chosen the timetable problem (TTP), a problem that is known to be NP-hard [5], which has been intensively investigated for its practical relevance [2, 1]