This research describes a decision support system (DSS) to solve the NP-hard academic scheduling problem at the college level. The problem is formulated as a 0 – 1 integer programming problem. A Hungarian based heuristic algorithm is implemented to solve the problem. Then it is incorporated into a friendly window interface not only to facilitate user job but to enable him/her to improve the schedule's quality without violating any hard constraint. The resulting DSS which runs on a PC has been tested on real data from different colleges of King Abdul Aziz University during four semesters. Results were satisfactory. The faculty of Economics and Administration has formally implemented it for producing its timetable for the spring semester 2004. A survey is conducted to compare the time table quality against the manually prepared time table. The survey produced positive results encouraging other colleges to switch from manual to the automated system.

Keywords:

Decision Support System, Academic Scheduling Problem