An enterprise system component based on graph colouring for exam timetabling

Purpose - This paper aims to consider the exam timetabling of the re-sit session in the Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences of Sfax. The objective is to find a timetable which minimizes the number of timeslots for exams required by the enrolled students.Design methodology approach - Two heuristic procedures based on graph colouring are developed and tested on real data to solve the exam timetabling problem at the faculty.Findings - These heuristics were tested on a simple example which shows the out-performance of the second heuristic compared with the first one. When tested with the real data of the faculty, exam size heuristic provides a timetable with a shorter timeframe; however, the timetable obtained from the second heuristic is of better quality.Originality value - The main contribution of this paper is to create an automated exam timetabling that helps the faculty to manage its own enterprise system.