The Convex Hull Heuristic for Nonlinear 0-1 Programming Problems with Linear Constraints

The Convex Hull Heuristic (CHH) is a heuristic for mixed-integer programming problems with a nonlinear objective function and linear constraints. It is a matheuristic in two ways: it is based on the mathematical programming algorithm called simplicial decomposition, or SD, and at each iteration, one solves a mixed-integer programming problem with a linear objective function … Read more

Dynamic Portfolio Selection with Linear Control Policies for Coherent Risk Minimization

This paper is concerned with a linear control policy for dynamic portfolio selection. We develop this policy by incorporating time-series behaviors of asset returns on the basis of coherent risk minimization. Analyzing the dual form of our optimization model, we demonstrate that the investment performance of linear control policies is directly connected to the intertemporal … Read more

A Framework for Mathematical Optimization in Microservice Architectures

In the last years, the gap between solution methods in literature and optimization running in production has increased. Agile development practices, DevOps and modern cloud-based infrastructure call for a revisit of how optimization software is developed. We review the state-of-the-art, propose a development framework that can be applied across different programming languages and modeling frameworks … Read more

Supermodularity in Two-Stage Distributionally Robust Optimization

In this paper, we solve a class of two-stage distributionally robust optimization problems which have the property of supermodularity. We exploit the explicit upper bounds on the expectation of supermodular functions and derive the worst-case distribution for the robust counterpart. This enables us to develop an efficient method to derive an exact optimal solution of … Read more

Minimizing Airplane Boarding Time

The time it takes passengers to board an airplane is known to influence the turn-around time of the aircraft and thus bears a significant cost-saving potential for airlines. Although minimizing boarding time therefore is the most important goal from an economic perspective, previous efforts to design efficient boarding strategies apparently never tackled this task directly. … Read more

Exact Methods for the Traveling Salesman Problem with Drone

Efficiently handling last-mile deliveries becomes more and more important nowadays. Using drones to support classical vehicles allows improving delivery schedules as long as efficient solution methods to plan last-mile deliveries with drones are available. We study exact solution approaches for some variants of the traveling salesman problem with drone (TSP-D) in which a truck and … Read more

A Polynomial-time Algorithm with Tight Error Bounds for Single-period Unit Commitment Problem

This paper proposes a Lagrangian dual based polynomial-time approximation algorithm for solving the single-period unit commitment problem, which can be formulated as a mixed integer quadratic programming problem and proven to be NP-hard. Tight theoretical bounds for the absolute errors and relative errors of the approximate solutions generated by the proposed algorithm are provided. Computational … Read more

Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problems with Arbitrary Precedence Graphs

A common assumption in the shop scheduling literature is that the processing order of the operations of each job is sequential; however, in practice there can be multiple connections and finish-to-start dependencies among the operations of each job. This paper studies flexible job shop scheduling problems with arbitrary precedence graphs. Rigorous mixed integer and constraint … Read more

Customized transition towards smart homes: A fast framework for economic analyses

Smart homes allow the optimization of energy usage so that households can reduce electricity bills, or even make profits. By 2020, 20% of all households in Europe and 35% in North America will be expected to become smart homes. Although smart homes seem to be the future for homes, many customers have the perception that … Read more