Timetabling is an important challenge faced by many organizations, especially organizations which
require allocation of resources to a specific time and location. Due to the wide spread applications
of scheduling, research in the area is also scattered and usually problem specific. Hence we are
focusing our attention on educational institutions, however even within the scope of educational
institutions the scheduling problem can still have several facets, these includes class scheduling,
facilities scheduling, timetable scheduling, exam scheduling and many more. We have selected
the area of exam scheduling as the main interest of this research work. In many educational
institutions timetable is carried out manually and in most cases it is a trial and error approach.
In some institutions the process of timetable generations relies heavily on the experience of the
person in charge to be created making the task highly dependent on a person. Timetabling or
scheduling has become a major problem in many organizations or institutions. Without automatic
scheduling, great effort and ample time will be needed to prepare and optimize these schedules.
For example in higher learning institutions, to satisfy multiple constraints examination and class
scheduling such as eliminating clashes, and minimizing occurrence of two exams in a row are still
a problem. However with intelligent systems, process automation can be carried out to produce
feasible timetable with less resources and time. Timetabling or scheduling research do not only
concentrates on generating feasible timetable but the efficiency of the solution generated is also
sought after. Over the years attempts have been made to develop computer software to handle
these activities. These research efforts evaluated various approaches, created new methods,
produce promising findings and results. However, due to the inherent complexity of the problem,
there is still a room for improvement of the current state of the art.
