Effectiveness-Equity Models for Facility Location Problems on Tree Networks

We propose models to investigate effectiveness-equity tradeoffs in tree network facility location problems. We use the commonly used median objective as a measure of effectiveness, and the Gini index as a measure of (in)equity, and formulate bicriteria problems involving these objectives. We develop procedures to identify an efficient set of solutions to these problems, analyze … Read more

Asset Allocation under the Basel Accord Risk Measures

Financial institutions are currently required to meet more stringent capital requirements than they were before the recent financial crisis; in particular, the capital requirement for a large bank’s trading book under the Basel 2.5 Accord more than doubles that under the Basel II Accord. The significant increase in capital requirements renders it necessary for banks … Read more

A two-step optimization approach for job shop scheduling problem using a genetic algorithm

This paper presents a two-step optimization approach to solve the complex scheduling problem in a job shop environment. This problem is also known as the Job Shop Scheduling Problem (JSSP). The JSSP is a difficult problem in combinatorial optimization for which extensive investigation has been devoted to the development of efficient algorithms. The proposed approach … Read more

ALGORITHM & DOCUMENTATION: MINRES-QLP for Singular Symmetric and Hermitian Linear Equations and Least-Squares Problems

We describe algorithm MINRES-QLP and its FORTRAN 90 implementation for solving symmetric or Hermitian linear systems or least-squares problems. If the system is singular, MINRES-QLP computes the unique minimum-length solution (also known as the pseudoinverse solution), which generally eludes MINRES. In all cases, it overcomes a potential instability in the original MINRES algorithm. A positive-definite … Read more

Reliable p-median facility location problem: two-stage robust models and algorithms

In this paper, we propose a set of two-stage robust optimization models to design reliable p-median facility location networks subject to disruptions. A customized column-and- constraint generation approach is implemented and shown to be more effective than Benders cutting plane method. Numerical experiments are performed on real data and management insights on system design are … Read more

Solving the integrated airline recovery problem using column-and-row generation

Airline recovery presents very large and difficult problems requiring high quality solutions within very short time limits. To improve computational performance, the complete airline recovery problem is generally formulated as a series of sequential stages. While the sequential approach greatly simplifies the complete recovery problem, there is no guarantee of global optimality or solution quality. … Read more

Two methods of pruning Benders’ cuts and their application to the management of a gas portfolio

In this article, we describe a gas portfolio management problem, which is solved with the SDDP (Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming) algorithm. We present some improvements of this algorithm and focus on methods of pruning Benders’ cuts, that is to say, methods of picking out the most relevant cuts among those which have been computed. Our … Read more

Efficient Heuristic Algorithms for Maximum Utility Product Pricing Problems

We propose improvements to some of the best heuristic algorithms for optimal product pricing problem originally designed by Dobson and Kalish in the late 1980’s and in the early 1990’s. Our improvements are based on a detailed study of a fundamental decoupling structure of the underlying mixed integer programming (MIP) problem and on incorporating more … Read more

Solving mixed integer nonlinear programming problems for mine production planning with stockpiling

The open-pit mine production scheduling problem has received a great deal of attention in recent years, both in the academic literature, and in the mining industry. Optimization approaches to strategic planning for mine exploitation have become the industry standard. However most of these approaches focus on extraction sequencing, and don’t consider the material flow after … Read more