Greedy algorithm for solving student allocation problem in internship program: a case study

This paper presented greedy algorithm for solving student allocation problem that has arisen in internship program. In internship program, engineering students stay one semester in industries which are located across the country and teachers visit students once/twice for supervision during the program. As the industries scatter across the country, teachers spend long time on travel. And this results in wastage of teachers working time and money spent for transport. Therefore, allocating students to universities near the internship location extensively reduces the transport time and money spent for transport. For the current study, we consider 4th mechanical engineering students who are currently working in the industry. The proposed approach extensively decrease the distance traveled from 23,210 km to 2,488.8 km and the time spent on the road from 397 hrs. 40 min to 51 hrs. 30 min. and finally, the results obtained from the greedy algorithm is compared with other heuristics (i.e., Genetic algorithm and Particle swarm optimization) and the greedy algorithm outperforms the other methods.