Automated Course Scheduling System for Naval Training,

Throughout the Naval Education and Training Command NAVEDTRACOM, generation and maintenance of a feasible schedule for Navy training courses is labor-intensive. Minimal guidance is provided, resulting in scheduling processes subject to the vagaries of individual style and competency. In view of these problems, an effort is being made to develop a scheduling methodology that will assist Navy training-complex personnel in achieving an optimalquasi-optimal schedule in a quick and easy way. The Automated Course Scheduling System ACSS was developed to relieve Naval training personnel from the burden of the labor-intensive scheduling process and provide them with the capability of studying all possible schedules to achieve better utilization of school resources. The ACSS is a high-level, interactive, and user-oriented system intended for use at the school level. Its design is based on limited and low-cost hardware requirements. The system can be implemented readily on a Wang 2200 system with a dual floppy diskette drive and requires a memory of 16-K bytes. With the support of a number of data bases, the ACSS can be used to perform 1 random retrieval of training-course data 2 feasibility assessment of training demands under available resources, 3 documentation of schedule work sheets, and 4 editing and printing of schedules. Presently the research effort is directed toward evaluating and field-testing the system.