Abstract A general paradigm for solving resource allocation, timetabling and scheduling problems is presented. The paradigm is based on an expert-system approach which looks for a feasible solution that satisfies the problem's real-life constraints. The new paradigm includes generic concepts for resources, activities, constraints and allocations, as well as a general control strategy for the family of resource allocation problems. The control strategy includes three parts that deal with allocation, with constraints checking and with changes to allocations, termed local changes . The proposed paradigm has been tested on three real-world problems: crews assignment to air force missions, class scheduling for a university department, and timetabling of final examinations for the faculty of natural sciences. All cases were solved well in a few minutes' running time of Prolog-based systems that implemented the proposed paradigm on a VAX 780. These case studies are described in the paper in some detail, and an overall evaluation of the methodology is given.
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