A bi-objective Model for a University Course Time Tabling Problem Considering Professors Satisfaction: A Case Study

Recently, university courses time tabling problem has been attended as a main issue by most universities and educational departments. In this paper, a bi-objective model is proposed to formulate a university courses time tabling problem which aims to minimize the cost of assigning courses to professors and classes during time horizon and maximize professorschr('39') satisfaction through minimizing their total idle time, simultaneously. Furthermore, despite of previous similar works in this area in which predefined values are considered as the assignmentchr('39') cost coefficients, in this paper, for the first time, an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach is used to calculate these coefficients which enables educational departments to attend various criteria in considering assignment cost coefficients. Finally, to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed model, a real case study in industrial engineering faculty of Bu-Ali Sina University is done.