João Pedro Pedroso We study a variant of the Probabilistic Travelling Salesman Problem arising when retailers crowdsource last-mile deliveries to their own customers, who can refuse or accept in exchange for a reward. A planner must identify which deliveries to offer, knowing that all deliveries need fulfilment, either via crowdsourcing or using the retailer’s own vehicle. We formalise … Read more
Packing rings into a minimum number of rectangles is an optimization problem which appears naturally in the logistics operations of the tube industry. It encompasses two major difficulties, namely the positioning of rings in rectangles and the recursive packing of rings into other rings. This problem is known as the Recursive Circle Packing Problem (RCPP). … Read more
Physical properties of materials are seldom studied in the context of packing problems. In this work we study the behavior of semifluids: materials with particular characteristics, that share properties both with solids and with fluids. We describe the importance of some specific semifluids in an industrial context, and propose methods for tackling the problem of … Read more
Valve-point loading affects the input-output characteristics of generating units, bringing the fuel costs nonlinear and nonsmooth. This has been considered in the solution of load dispatch problems, but not in the planning phase of unit commitment. This paper presents a mathematical optimization model for the thermal unit commitment problem considering valve-point loading. The formulation is … Read more
The vector bin packing problem (VBP) is a generalization of bin packing with multiple constraints. In this problem we are required to pack items, represented by p-dimensional vectors, into as few bins as possible. The multiple-choice vector bin packing (MVBP) is a variant of the VBP in which bins have several types and items have … Read more
We present an exact method, based on an arc-flow formulation with side constraints, for solving bin packing and cutting stock problems — including multi-constraint variants — by simply representing all the patterns in a very compact graph. Our method includes a graph compression algorithm that usually reduces the size of the underlying graph substantially without … Read more
In the energy sector, there has been a transition from monopolistic to oligopolistic situations (pool markets); each time more companies’ optimization revenues depend on the strategies of their competitors. The market rules vary from country to country. In this work, we model the Iberian Day-Ahead Duopoly Market and find exactly which are the outcomes (Nash … Read more
We present a new method for solving bin packing problems, including two-constraint variants, based on an arc flow formulation with side constraints. Conventional formulations for bin packing problems are usually highly symmetric and provide very weak lower bounds. The arc flow formulation proposed provides a very strong lower bound, and is able to break symmetry … Read more