Operations Research 2025
Abstract Submission

2237. Conference Scheduling in practice with Gurobi: A multi-objective approach

Invited abstract in session TA-9: OR Software in Practice, stream Software for Operations Research.

Thursday, 8:45-10:15
Room: H15

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Stefan Heinz

Abstract

Scheduling talks for a conference is a challenging task due to the
combination of general constraints and individual preferences. General
restrictions include factors such as room capacities, equipment
availability, and time slot limitations, while personal constraints may
encompass speaker availability, travel schedules, and preferred
presentation times. Furthermore, organizers often aim to balance session
topics, avoid conflicts between talks of similar interest, and ensure an
overall coherent schedule.

In this work, we present a multi-objective optimization approach to address
the complexities of conference scheduling. Our methodology considers both
hard constraints that must be strictly satisfied and soft constraints that
capture speaker and organizer preferences, which are optimized as part of
the objective function. By incorporating multiple conflicting goals, such
as minimizing scheduling conflicts while maximizing speaker satisfaction,
we demonstrate how to generate high-quality schedules that are both
feasible and practically desirable.

We illustrate our approach through a real-world example that emerged in the
context of organizing a mid-sized conference. This case study highlights
the challenges of the scheduling process and showcases the effectiveness of
our method in generating balanced and satisfactory timetables under
realistic conditions

Keywords

Status: accepted

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