An integer programming model for the academic timetabling problem

Every term, universities must decide the timetable its academic programs will operate with during the following semester. The academic timetable (AT) results from defining schedules, teachers and classrooms for the different subjects during an academic term. Usually, this task involves the work of highly qualified employees during many hours a week for several months every year. The available technologies for dealing with this problem often have the capabilities to prevent conflicts in classrooms and schedules for teachers and students, yet they do not generate a feasible schedule from scratch; it is often generated manually using heuristic procedures. Generating a feasible timetable for academic institutions is a process that has to be carried out on a case by case basis. Every institution has its own operating characteristics making a successful solution approach in one place a not so useful tool for another institution. An integer programming (IP) model to generate the AT for the Faculty of Industrial Engineering of the Bolivarian Pontifical University at Bucaramanga-Colombia (FIIoUPBBGA) is proposed. The model helps to determine an AT reasonably adjusted to reality enforcing its main features while outperforming the currently used methods.