Introduction

The division of labor symbolized by the assembly line is one of the most iconic aspects of the industrialization. Instead of workers being responsible for building a product from start to finish, workers specialize on specific steps of the production. The resulting higher productivity comes with an increased coordination effort, since each step of the production can be completed by an ever smaller proportion of the workers. The increasing coordination effort led to a new industry of mechanized data processing, to keep up with the ever-increasing data processing.

In the spirit of this division of labor, the goal of the project is to provide a non-profit software, that domain experts use to model and optimize schedules. For this, the software provides specialized modeling and optimization capacities in an understandable manner.

Project's objectives

There are always recurring planning tasks at schools, such as planning a colloquium, which has to be carried out within a given time frame.

Not only must it be determined by which examiners a test is held, but also where and when these take place. A change of rooms between an examiner's consecutive trials should be avoided, in order to save time. Maximizing the time between a student's exams reduces their stress. In short, a multitude of interests have to be balanced.

The aim is to use the provided software to support schools creating schedules. The project is not only limited to the current status of the software, but also about expanding the program and making it more usable. Since development capacities are limited, like everything in life, the well-known motto applies here: First Come, First Served

School planning

While studying computer science, several optimizers for school planning tasks were created. In this project, these will be restored and expanded with new functionality.

A demonstration is provided on the live server in which a schedule is created for a fictitious exam, where every student is questioned by 2 teachers for each test. The live server shows how such a planning could be carried out in the cloud. A download of the server program is also provided. This means that this program can be used not only online, but also locally and without any internet connection.

In addition to planning a colloquium, we are currently working on two other organizational tasks. On the one hand, a sport course planning tool is created, which, among other things, determines which sport courses actually take place. On the other hand, we are working on creating a complete student timetable. This determines the lessons that are taken by a student. It states the teacher, time, and location for each lesson, that is going to be held.

Details

The program is available in English and is developed under an open source license by Mārtiņš Avots on a non-profit basis.