Cutting Planes by Projecting Interior Points onto Polytope Facets

Given a point x inside a polytope P and a direction d, the projection of x along d asks to find the maximum step length t such that x+td is feasible; we say x+td is a pierce point because it belongs to the boundary of P. We address this projection sub-problem with arbitrary interior points … Read more

Mixed-Integer Programming Techniques for the Connected Max-k-Cut Problem

We consider an extended version of the classical Max-k-Cut problem in which we additionally require that the parts of the graph partition are connected. For this problem we study two alternative mixed-integer linear formulations and review existing as well as develop new branch-and-cut techniques like cuts, branching rules, propagation, primal heuristics, and symmetry breaking. The … Read more

Branching with Hyperplanes in the Criterion Space: the Frontier Partitioner Algorithm for Biobjective Integer Programming

We present an algorithm for finding the complete Pareto frontier of biobjective integer programming problems. The method is based on the solution of a finite number of integer programs. The feasible sets of the integer programs are built from the original feasible set, by adding cuts that separate efficient solutions. Providing the existence of an … Read more

Efficient heuristic algorithm for identifying critical nodes in planar networks

This paper presents a new method for identifying critical nodes in planar networks. We propose an efficient method to evaluate the quality of solutions by using special properties of planar networks. It enables us to develop a computationally efficient heuristic algorithm for the problem. The proposed algorithm assisted on randomly generated planar networks. The experimental … Read more

Model and exact solution for a two-echelon inventory routing problem

The classic version of the Inventory Routing Problem considers a system with one supplier that manages the stock level of a set of customers. The supplier defines when and how much products to supply and how to combine customers in routes while minimizing storage and transportation costs. We present a new version of this problem … Read more

A Critical Survey on the Network Optimization Algorithms for Evacuation Planning Problems

In the last decades, research on emergency traffic management has received high attention from the operations research community and many pioneer researchers have established it as one of the most fertile research areas. We consider the computationally hard flows over time problems from wider perspective including flow/time dependent attributes (dynamic flows), a possibility of flows … Read more

Best case exponential running time of a branch-and-bound algorithm using an optimal semidefinite relaxation

Chvatal (1980) has given a simple example of a knapsack problem for which a branch-and-bound algorithm using domination and linear relaxations to eliminate subproblems will use an exponential number of steps in the best case. In this short note it is shown that Chvatals result remains true when the LP relaxation is replaced with a … Read more

On a reduction of the weighted induced bipartite subgraph problem to the weighted independent set problem

We study the weighted induced bipartite subgraph problem (WIBSP). The goal of WIBSP is, given a graph and nonnegative weights for the nodes, to find a set W of nodes with the maximum total weight such that a subgraph induced by W is bipartite. WIBSP is also referred as to the graph bipartization problem or … Read more

Why is maximum clique often easy in practice?

To this day, the maximum clique problem remains a computationally challenging problem. Indeed, despite researchers’ best efforts, there exist unsolved benchmark instances with one thousand vertices. However, relatively simple algorithms solve real-life instances with millions of vertices in a few seconds. Why is this the case? Why is the problem apparently so easy in many … Read more

The sharpest column: stabilizing column generation for the bin packing problem via a lexicographic pricer

In spite of being an extremely successful method to tackle mathematical programs involving a very large number of variables, Column Generation (CG) is known to suffer from stabilization issues which can slow down its convergence significantly. In this article, we propose a new parameter-free stabilization technique for CG based on solving a lexicographic pricing problem. … Read more