Scheduling and timetabling

Course goals

Assessment
There will be an oral exam, which counts for 50% of the final mark. On this you must at least score a 5.0 to pass.
Furthermore, there are take-home exercises, which count for 25%.
Finally, each student has to present a paper, which counts for 25% as well.

To qualify for a repair of the final result the mark needs to be at least a 4, or “AANV”.

Prequisites
We advise students to choose this course in their second year of the master, when they have followed INFOMADS Algorithms for decision support.
If you have followed the bachelor courses INFOOPT Optimalisering en Complexiteit, INFOAL Algoritmiek, or INFOB3DW Discrete Wiskunde, then there is no need to follow the course INFOMADS before INFOSTT.

Content

The course consists of two major subjects: Timetabling and Scheduling (which are treated in this order).

• In the first part, we discuss problems that occur in practice, like determining the optimal time-table for the Dutch Railways, the planning of buses and drivers in Rotterdam, and the construction of a timetable for school. The focus here is on finding good solutions that can be used in practice. Examples of techniques we use here are ILP models, min cost max flow, and local search.
• In the second part we give an introduction into scheduling. Here we discuss questions like: what is the best order to execute a set of tasks in case you want to minimize some given objective, like total weighted completion time? The focus in this part is on theory.

Course form
Lectures.

Literature
Handouts.