Genetic Algorithms in Timetabling . A New Approach .

The timetabling problem comes up every year in educational institutions, which has been solved by leveraging human resource for a long time. The problem is a special version of the optimization problems, it is computationally NP-hard. Although, there are some attempts to apply computer based methods, their use is limited by the problem’s complexity, therefore Genetic Algorithms were applied, because they are robust enough in such a huge problem space. In this paper a new and more flexible timetable representation, the set representation is introduced which meets the demands better than former ones. The proposed method proved to be efficient in real life application of a secondary school, as well.