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COLLEGE or HOME ECONOMICS If? '
EAST LANSING, MECHIGAN

AN APPROACH TO SCHEDULING BY COMPUTEB/

By
//
Clara Louise Augustine
1014 North Fairview
Lansing, Michigan #8912

Address after August 20, 1966:

206 West Park Road
Iowa City, Iowa 52240

This study was carried out as a problem for
partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the Master of Science Degree in the Depart-
ment of Institution Administration, College

of Home Economics, Michigan State University,
East Lansing. Hrs. Augustine, then a computer
consultant in the College of Home Economics,
did the research under the direction of

Dr. Grace A. Miller and Dr. Frances M. Magrabi.
Hrs. Augustine now resides in Iowa City, Iowa.

AN APPROACH TO SCHEDULING BY COMPUTER

General increases in the size and functions
of many types of food service operations have
added to the complexity of fitting the time and
talents of available workers to a designated
number of required operational tasks. In many
cases, the development of economically operable
work schedules is demanding a disprOportionate
amount of administrative time for completion of
this very necessary but routine task.

In relation to hospital service, Casbergue (1)
reported that the population growth and increasing
demand for hospital care have outstripped the
ability of hospitals to provide acceptable service.
Fewer highly trained personnel are available to
meet heavier and heavier demands. He stated that
the time and energy of the dwindling number of
skilled professionals must be conserved so they
will be free to do the Jobs for which they were
trained and which only they are capable of per-
forming. Boutine tasks must be automated as much
as possible.

Donaldson (2) stated that there are many
possible applications of data processing and
computer programming in the planning and operation
of a dietary department which could greatly reduce

the amount of time and money used for completion

-2...

of routine tasks. In food service, areas that
look promising for computer based automation
include cost accounting, purchasing forecasts,
recipe calculation, inventory control, nutri-
tional analysis, and scheduling employees and
work loads. (1)

Similarly, the accelerated growth in
high school, college, and university enrollments
has added to the complexity of developing A
schedules which permit all individuals to use
their time optimally. Administrators and faculty
need to use their time for instruction, profes-
sional counseling, guidance, and research and
evaluation rather than for the detailed and
routine task of scheduling classes for students,
teachers, and physical facilities.

In discussing flexible scheduling of
classes in secondary schools, Trump (3) pointed
out that mechanical aids could simplify the
process and help avoid conflicts, and alleviate
some other operational problems that arise. He
emphasized that, in planning, the concepts of
schedule—making come first and the machines that
facilitate the process come second.

Research in automating educational

scheduling has centered around the problem of

-3-

assigning students to a manually prepared master
class schedule. (4) Recently, the master class
schedule has been generated by computer with the
inputs being student course demands, teacher pre-
ferences, administrative stipulations, and the
physical plant facilities available. A computer
program manipulates these data to generate a
master class schedule as free of conflicts as
possible, then prints out the student class
schedules, teacher schedules, class lists, and
other requested information.
TEE PROJECT

- A particular case which illustrates the
concepts of schedule-making was the recurring
problem which confronted the professor and graduate.

assistant responsible for the course ENG1 362,

 

1Department of Home Management and Child

Development, College of Home Economics

 

Child Study, at Michigan State University.
Requirements for the course included scheduling

five different 50-minute observation experiences

in the Child Development Laboratory for each

student enrolled. The activities of pre-school
children to be observed were eating, mental develop-

ment, physical-motor development, social development,

u ‘ -

-14.-

and emotional development. These experiences had
to be scheduled within a five-week period during
free time for the students (times other than class
or work) and had to fit into the Child Development
Laboratory school days. The professor specified
the times of the day during which the different
types of observation experiences could be schedul-
ed. In Winter Term 1966, thirty hours of out-of-
class teacher time were required for manual devel-
opment of an operable observation schedule for

the 141 students enrolled in the course.

This problem provided a case study which
involved principles basic to a variety of person-
nel scheduling problems and which conceivably
could be applied to similar problems in food
service management. The total project included
analyzing the traditional scheduling procedure,
gathering and coding the data, developing and
writing the program, and writing directions for
using the program. Two modest goals were set:

1) to simulate the manual scheduling procedure
used for the course ENG 362, Child Study, and
2) to reduce the clerical tasks to a minimum.
Completion of the project resulted in the
successful development of procedures for coding

the data and a computer program with directions

.3

for its use.2

 

2The program and description for use are on
deposit in the Computer Library, Computer Center,
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.

 

DESIGN 2: THE PROJECT

There were four essential steps in the
development of this automated scheduling procedure.
The first step was to analyze the manual scheduling
procedure, the time and Space requirements for each
of the five types of observations, and the kinds
of data needed. Secondly, data formats were devel-
oped. The third step was to formulate procedures
for coding and assembling the data. As a final
step, the program was written and tested.

The Scheduling Specifications. The overall
requirements for the five types of activities to
be observed were the length of time for each
observation, the time lapse between observations,
the time of day for the observation, and the
sequence of the activities to be observed. Each
student observation had to be scheduled for a
50-minute free period of the student; each student
could be assigned only one type of observation

experience in any given week; and since there were

-6-

twenty observation spaces in the laboratory units,
this was the maximum number of students that could
be scheduled to observe the children during the
same time period on any given day of a given week.
Furthermore, each type of observation had
certain additional requirements that had to be
satisfied. For example, eating observations had
to be scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 12:20 p.m.; they
could be scheduled for any day of the school week
during any one of the five weeks; and approximately
one-fifth of the students were to observe this
activity each week. For students who were not
free during this time period any day of the school
week, this observation experience had to be sche-
duled during the fifth week and special arrangements
made with instructors or employers so these students
could be free to complete this course requirement.
For the four other types of observations the
following restrictions were imposed. For any given
student, each of the four remaining observation
experiences had to be scheduled for the same time
of the day and the same day of the week but in four
different weeks. Observations for mental deve10pment
and emotional development could be scheduled in any
one of the five weeks; the social development
observation could be scheduled in weeks one through

four only; and the physical-motor develOpment

"N.

-7-

observation could be scheduled in the first and
second weeks only. The reason for these latter
two restrictions was to provide observation
experience in these areas before theoretical
material on these topics was presented in lecture.
Th3 Data Specifications. Examination of
the University class periods and the Child
Development Laboratory units school schedules
revealed that there were a maximum of twenty-
three time periods each week for student obser-
vations. Twenty-three 1—column fields were used
for coding data for the time periods for each week
and five 1-column fields were used for the five
observation weeks in both the student data array
and the Child Development Laboratory data array.
Each student hand-coded his own weekly
class schedule, his first and second time period
preferences for all observations except eating,
and his university student identification number
in assigned numbered lines on IBM 555 mark sense
sheets. After the coding was spot checked for
accuracy, data cards were mechanically punched
from the mark sense sheets by the IBM 1230 Scanner.
One data card was sufficient for each set of

student data.

-8-

The school schedules and laboratory unit
identification for each of the twenty observation
spaces were coded in specified columns on 80-
column forms and data cards were punched from
them. One data card for each observation space
for each week was punched. '

Since the number of enrollees in this
particular course and the number of observation
spaces may vary from term to term, the computer
program was designed to acoomodate a maximum of
180 sets of student data and 100 sets of Child
Development Laboratory data. The finished program
also had to be sufficiently flexible to acoomodate
different sets of student data and observation
space data in subsequent university terms.

The code for the two data arrays consisted
of a‘l if a student or an observation space in a
laboratory unit was available for scheduling at
a given time period and a{Q if not available. In
the student array, the five fields designating the
weeks were all marked 3, Each observation space
in the Child Development Laboratory units had to
be coded for each week. A‘; was coded into the
field representing a particular week and aig was

recorded in each of the other four fields.

.‘L

 

-9-

The Program. Using the scheduling specifica-
tions and the formats of the input data arrays,
Program HMCB62 was written to schedule the
students for their required observations in the

Child Development Laboratory. Program.HM0362

is comprised of four parts, a main program and
three subroutines. The main program reads in data
and stores the arrays in memory, calls three sub-
routines which schedule the students for their
five required observations and prints out an
observation schedule for each student and the
observation space array after the schedules are
completed. It converts the coded day, time, and
week for each scheduled observation to the actual
day, time, and week.

The first subroutine schedules all students
for their eating observation, changing the week
used for this observation from one student to
the next. The second subroutine schedules all
students for their mental development observation,
again rotating the weeks, using each student's
first time period preference if possible. If
this time period cannot be used, the second time
preference is substituted. If neither time

preference is available, or if the student did not

-10...

choose a time period or if his mark sense sheet
was coded incorrectly, the computer is instructed
to find a time period available to schedule the
observation. The time period used for each
student's mental development observation is also
used for the three remaining observations in the
open weeks.

Each student's observation schedule is
completed by the third subroutine in the following
order: 1) physical-motor development observation,
2) social development observation, and 3) emotional
development observation. Provisions are made in
the program to schedule the physical-motor devel-
opment observation during the first or second week
and for the social development observation to be
scheduled in or before the fourth week.

For each student observation to be scheduled,
the product of the time period and weekcodes for
an observation Space and the codes for the same
time period and week for a student must equal one.
The program instructs the computer to scan the two
arrays until the code product of the four selected
elements equals one. This means that the observa-
tion space and the student are both available for
an observation at a given time period within a

given week. After an observation is scheduled,

-11-

the program instructs the computer to replace the
l_in the designated week for that student by a‘Q
and the i’in the time period for the specific
observation space by a 9. By this method, a
student cannot be scheduled again in this part-
icular week and the particular observation space

at this time period is unavailable.

RESULTS

Program HM0362 is a 3600 Fortran computer
program to schedule the required observation
experiences in the Child Development Laboratory
units at Michigan State University for students
enrolled in the course ENG 362, Child Study. It
was written and pretested during Winter Term 1966,
using the class and work schedules of the lfil
students already enrolled in the course and the
observation space data of the Child Development
Laboratory units for that term. After a series
of tests, all students were scheduled for their
eating observations. One hundred twenty-six of
the 141 students were scheduled for their four
other observations during their first or second
time period preferences. The program instructed
the computer to schedule these four observations

for each of the fifteen remaining students during

-12-

a free time period in his class-work schedule.
Twelve students were so scheduled, leaving three
students to be assigned manually. The five types
of observations all met the scheduling specifica-
tions.

The computer program was first used to
schedule student observations for Spring Term
1966. All 88 enrollees were scheduled for their
eating observations, and all but four students
were scheduled for the remaining observations in
their first time period preference. The program
instructed the computer to schedule the four ob-»
servations for each of these students in a free
time period in his class-work schedule. One
student was so assigned, leaving three students
to be manually scheduled by the professor. The
program results were thoroughly checked, and all
student observation schedules satisfied the
requirements.

By automating this scheduling process,
clerical time was reduced by an estimated 50 per-
cent. As in the manual scheduling Operation, it
was necessary to collect and organize the data,
but the time used for the actual scheduling pro-
cedure was virtually eliminated. Computer time

used in the pretest was approximately 1% minutes

-13-

to schedule 693 student observations, and
slightly over 1 minute was required to schedule
928 observations in Spring Term 1966.

mm 0511;; ONS '

It is believed that the four procedural
steps used in this project are basic to the
development of all automated scheduling programs.
The first step, analysis of the problem, is the
responsibility of the administrator or teacher.
He must be thoroughly familiar with every detail
of his scheduling operation and be able to com-
municate precisely the scheduling specifications,
data available, and the nature of the results
needed to a computer consultant or to the person
who writes the computer scheduling program. Al-
though this analysis may take considerable time
and thought, it is imperative that every detail
regarding the scheduling Specifications and the
data be evaluated before the program is written.
Omission of significant details at the beginning
of program development will reduce program effic-
iency, limit results, and increase the expense
of developing a successful program.

The computer consultant or programmer

specifies data formats, helps formulate

-14-

procedures for coding and assembling data, gets
the program written and tested, and prepares
directions for its use. The administrator or
teacher is responsible for interpreting and
evaluating the programmed results.

Once the initial investments of professional
time and expense to computerize routine scheduling
tasks have been made, the major advantages are
optimum solutions for recurring scheduling pro-
blems and release of professionals from routine
tasks so their time and talents may be channeled

to more productive purposes.

109 08/04
38736 1 1...

REFERENCES

Casbergue, J. P. Computer Applications in
Nutrition and Food Service Management.
Proceedings of the Society £23 Egg Advance-
‘mggg‘gf‘gggd Service Research (October 1965).
Donaldson, B.g Making the Most of Dietary
Department Resources through Research.
Hospitals 38, (November 1, 1964) pp. 80-85.
Trump, Lloyd. Flexible Scheduling: Fad or
Fundamental? §hi_le£g Kappan an, (1963)
pp. 367~371.

Holzman, A. G. and Turkes, W. R. Optimal
Scheduling in Educational Tnstitutions.
Cooperative Research Project No. 1323.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of
Pittsburgh, l96h, pp. 11-27.

 

 

MECHIGAN STATE U:\‘.‘.'; .i;.(
COLLEGE OF HOE'EE ECOi-é=.:.,...;3
EAST LANSING, MICHlGAN

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