Memetic and scatter search metaheuristic algorithms for a multiobjective fortnightly university course timetabling problem: a case study

Abstract

This paper studies a multi-objective fortnightly university course timetabling problem. In this research, the Industrial Engineering Department of the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad is considered as the case study for investigation. Essentially, four objectives should be optimized where we used the Lp-metric method to aggregate them into a single objective. An integer linear programming model and two metaheuristic algorithms, i.e. memetic and scatter search, have been developed for the studied problem. Comparing the proposed algorithms with the results obtained by CPLEX, indicates the superiority of the scatter search algorithm. In particular, high quality solutions are achieved in a reasonable CPU time.