Implementation of constraint programming and simulated annealing for examination timetabling problem

Abstract

Examination timetabling problems is the allocation of exams into feasible slots and rooms subject to a set of constraints. Constraints can be categorized into hard and soft constraints where hard constraints must be satisfied while soft constraints are not necessarily to satisfy but be minimized as much as possible in order to produce a good solution. Generally, UMSLIC produces exam timetable without considering soft constraints. Therefore, this paper proposes the application of two algorithms which are Constraint Programming and Simulated Annealing to produce a better solution. Constraint Programming is used to generate feasible solution while Simulated Annealing is applied to improve the quality of solution. Experiments have been conducted with two datasets and the results show that the proposed algorithm managed to improve the solution regardless the different problem instances.