Providing a Mathematical Model for Solving the Problem of Timetabling of Periodical Services

Periodical services are scheduled in various methods throughout different industries and services. Customers or clients periodically visit institutions or service providers to request for a service. Examples are patients referring to physicians or university students to lecturers. This paper proposes a novel model for the scheduling of the periodical services that university students may inquire from their lecturers. The timing of the schedule should accommodate an even distribution of office visits, intervals between the visits, and continual visits, which may require longer time slots. Although the problem has a complex structure, a pure linear integer model is formulated to yield a satisfactory schedule. The solution is verified using two numerical examples and one real example on LINGO (version 17). The results indicate that the model enjoys an acceptable processing time while meeting all constraints, and may be employed successfully on a large scale.