A mixed-integer programming approach for solving university course timetabling problems

This article presents a mixed-integer programming model for solving the university timetabling problem which considers the allocation of students to classes and the assignment of rooms and time periods to each class. The model was developed as part of our participation in the International Timetabling Competition 2019 and produced a ranking of second place at the competition. Modeling a timetabling problem as a mixed-integer program is not new. Our contribution rests on a number of innovative features adapted to this problem which allow for a reduction in the number of variables and constraints of the mixed-integer program to manageable levels achieving a reasonable computational performance. The proposed algorithm consists of a first-stage method to obtain an initial feasible solution and a second-stage local search procedure to iteratively improve the solution value, both of which involve the optimization of mixed-integer programming problems.