A genetic algorithm in a schedule problem with special constraints

Abstract

Ramírez (2001) introduced the generalized robust coloring problem (GRCP), this problem lets solve timetabling problems which considers constraints such as: two events can not be assigned at the same time and there must be at least d days between two events.The GRCP deals with a robust coloring for a given graph with a fixed number of colors, not necessarily the chromatic number and considers the distance between colors as the penalization of complementary edges. It was shown that the problem is NP-complete, so it is necessary to use approximate methods to find good solutions in a reasonable time. This paper presents a hybrid of a genetic algorithm with a local search for cases of 30-120 hours per week; it is shown that for some cases the found solution is optimal and in other cases the solutions are very promising.