Eduardo Uchoa This article delves into the early development of the Column Generation technique. It begins with Kantorovich’s classic 1939 work, correcting widespread misconceptions about his contributions to the Cutting Stock Problem. Then, it brings to light Kantorovich and Zalgaller’s lesser-known 1951 book, which is revealed to contain a complete Column Generation algorithm. The article also places … Read more
This work proposes a partial optimization metaheuristic under special intensification conditions (POPMUSIC) for the classical capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP). The proposed approach uses a branch-cut-and-price algorithm as a powerful heuristic to solve subproblems whose dimensions are typically between 25 and 200 customers. The whole algorithm can be seen as the application of local search … Read more
Major advances were recently obtained in the exact solution of Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs). Sophisticated Branch-Cut-and-Price (BCP) algorithms for some of the most classical VRP variants now solve many instances with up to a few hundreds of customers. However, adapting and reimplementing those successful algorithms for other variants can be a very demanding task. This … Read more
We consider the Resource Constrained Shortest Path problem arising as a subproblem in state-of-the-art Branch-Cut-and-Price algorithms for vehicle routing problems. We propose a variant of the bi-directional label correcting algorithm in which the labels are stored and extended according to so-called bucket graph. Such organization of labels helps to decrease significantly the number of dominance … Read more
The current best exact algorithms for the Capacitated Arc Routing Problem are based on the combination of cut and column generation. This work presents a deep theoretical investigation of the formulations behind those algorithms, classifying them and pointing similarities and differences, advantages and disadvantages. In particular, we discuss which families of cuts and branching strategies … Read more
Christofides and Hadjiconstantinou introduced a dynamic programming state space relaxation for obtaining upper bounds for the Constrained Two-dimensional Guillotine Cutting Problem. The quality of those bounds depend on the chosen item weights, they are adjusted using a subgradient-like algorithm. This paper proposes Algorithm X, a new weight adjusting algorithm based on integer programming that provably … Read more
The recent research on the CVRP is being slowed down by the lack of a good set of benchmark instances. The existing sets suff er from at least one of the following drawbacks: (i) became too easy for current algorithms; (ii) are too arti cial; (iii) are too homogeneous, not covering the wide range of characteristics found … Read more
This paper deals with the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) with Draft Limits (TSPDL), which is a variant of the well-known TSP in the context of maritime transportation. In this recently proposed problem, draft limits are imposed due to restrictions on the port infrastructures. Exact algorithms based on three mathematical formulations are proposed and their performance … Read more
Large-sized extended formulations have the potential for providing high-quality bounds on some combinatorial optimization problems where the natural formulations perform poorly. This chapter discusses the use of some families of cuts that have been recently applied on extended formulations that are obtained by the discretization of the continuous variables occurring in the natural formulation of … Read more
The Time Dependent Traveling Salesman Problem (TDTSP) is a generalization of the classical Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), where arc costs depend on their position in the tour with respect to the source node. While TSP instances with thousands of vertices can be solved routinely, there are very challenging TDTSP instances with less than 100 vertices. … Read more