A Non-standard Genetic Algorithm Approach to Solve Constrained School Timetabling Problems

In this paper a non-standard constructive approach is described to solve problems of timetabling, so necessary in every school and university. Genetic Algorithms have been used, but adapting them to the characteristics of the problem under consideration. Hard constrains, feasible timetables, have been considered in the problem formulation, forcing us to define a particular population generation and a new guided mutation operator. It has been proved that modified genetic algorithms can be very useful in this kind of problems for the easiness of including constrains and the effectiveness of its resolution, reaching optimum values in few iterations.