Using linear programming (GLPK) for scheduling problems

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This article is an intermediate-level tutorial on using the GNU Linear Programming Kit (GLPK) to solve a real-world scheduling problem. I wrote it, because I found only few good resources online that show specific solution strategies. This article wants to demystify linear programming and help you to start from a working example.

Let’s first visit the problem. Scheduling outings for a rowing club can be tedious – and sometimes quite hard. Given a list of squad members and their availabilities, we want to create outings with exactly 1 coach, 1 cox, and 4 people for each side of the boat (bow/stroke). Rowing is sometimes duped the “ultimate team sport”, because even one missing person means that the entire crew cannot go out. When faced with this challenge during term break where many people are only available sporadically, I gave up after trying to do so manually and resorted to automating it. In turn, this allowed me to do more “bespoke” scheduling where I could offer everyone to provide fine-grained availability and preferences.

Glpk on Daniel Hugenroth

Using linear programming (GLPK) for scheduling problems