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CCC-Analysis |
  
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CCC-Analysis |
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In order to obtain a good timetable, it is important to locate possible bottlenecks that might cause an obstruction for the scheduling tool, and to eliminate these before the optimisation .
Such bottlenecks occur in the form of Critical-Conflict-Chains (CCC). These are defined as groups of lessons that cannot be scheduled at the same time due to a conflict between classes and/or coupled teachers.
The CCC analysis locates the longest chains in your lesson input data and identifies the coupled teacher at the heart of the obstruction. Replacing this teacher will often result in a shortening of the chain, permitting the scheduling of all periods.
If, for example, teacher Hugo is assigned to teach English (lesson 1) to class 1a and French (lesson 2) to class 2a, these two lessons cannot be scheduled at the same time. If lesson 1 (English, 1a) involves a coupled teacher (e.g. Newton) who is also assigned to teach Physics to class 2a, the number of lessons in this chain increases to three.
This means that whenever teacher Hugo teaches English to class 1a, two further lessons are automatically blocked (see diagram on the following page). Furthermore, Newton, who teaches Physics to class 2a, would also block the other two lessons since Hugo could not teach French to the same class at the same time, and Newton could not teach English to class 1a at the same time.
The total number of periods per week involved in a chain is a measure of how difficult it is for the software to schedule the lessons in the chain. It is easy to see, for instance, that a large number of different teacher teams will mean a rapid increase in the total number of periods in the chain. If this number is greater than the number of periods available in the time grid, it is mathematically impossible to schedule all the lessons in this chain.
The task of the CCC analysis is to locate the longest conflict chains. Start the analysis by accessing the menu item "Scheduling | CCCAnalysis". The CCC window appears and the CCC analysis starts automatically. The analysis can take up to several minutes, depending on the size of your school.