Creating seating plans: a practical application
研究了大型活动（如婚礼、晚宴）的座位安排问题，目标是让宾客与亲友同坐、避开不喜之人，提出了启发式算法并在商业网站应用，与整数规划模型对比了性能。
This paper examines the interesting problem of designing seating plans for large events such as weddings and gala dinners where, among other things, the aim is to construct solutions where guests are sat on the same tables as friends and family, but, perhaps more importantly, are kept away from those they dislike. This problem is seen to be -complete from a number of different perspectives. We describe the problem model and heuristic algorithm that is used on the commercial website www.weddingseatplanner.com. We present results on the performance of this algorithm, demonstrating the factors that can influence run time and solution quality, and also present a comparison with an equivalent IP model used in conjunction with a commercial solver.