Modified genetic algorithm for high school time-table scheduling with fuzzy time window

Abstract

Time-table scheduling in an educational institution is a very complex problem. This is because of many regulations that must be considered, which are often referred as hard and soft constraints. Unlike in college whose students can be at school only if they have any classes, in junior and senior high schools the schedule amounted to remain a full set of periods every day, so each student must follow a series of all learning process from morning till afternoon. The crowded schedule can make students too tired and distracted during the learning process. The purpose of this research is to make time-table scheduling within the right time window due to the consideration that each subject requires a different thinking portion. Considering the proper time window and the hardness of manual scheduling, we proposed a modified genetic algorithm with a fuzzy time window to solve this problem. Genetic algorithm with modified mutation operation has been implemented to find the optimum solution for this time-table scheduling. The modified mutation operator provides a guarantee in producing offspring that has better fitness value compared to the parent because this operator utilizes fuzzy values as a reference in the exchange of genes. With these guarantees, most offspring generated from the mutation process can be a feasible offspring and can save time to avoid repair mechanisms, so the proposed method can get the optimum solution faster.