Robust DWDM Routing and Provisioning under Polyhedral Demand Uncertainty

We present mixed integer linear programming models that are robust in the face of uncertain traffic demands known to lie in a certain polyhedron for the problem of dense wavelength division multiplexing network routing and provisioning at minimal cost. We investigate the solution of the problem in a set of numerical experiments for two models … Read more

In Situ Column Generation for a Cutting-Stock Problem

Working with an integer bilinear programming formulation of a one-dimensional cutting-stock problem, we develop an ILP-based local-search heuristic. The ILPs holistically integrate the master and subproblem of the usual price driven pattern-generation paradigm, resulting in a unified model that generates new patterns in situ. We work harder to generate new columns, but we are guaranteed … Read more

Manufacturer’s Mixed Pallet Design Problem

We study a problem faced by a major beverage producer. The company produces and distributes several brands to various customers from its regional distributors. For some of these brands, most customers do not have enough demand to justify full pallet shipments. Therefore, the company decided to design a number of mixed or “rainbow” pallets so … Read more

On the equivalence of the max-min transportation lower bound and the time-indexed lower bound for single-machine scheduling problems

New observations are made about two lower bound schemes for single-machine min-sum scheduling problems. We find that the strongest bound of those provided by transportation problem relaxations can be computed by solving a linear program. We show the equivalence of this strongest bound and the bound provided by the LP relaxation of the time-indexed integer … Read more

A branch and cut algorithm for solving the linear and quadratic integer programming problems

This paper first presents an improve cutting plane method for solving the linear programming problems, based on the primal simplex method with the current equivalent facet technique, in which the increment of objection function is allowed as a pivot variable to decide the search step size. We obtain a strong valid inequality from the objective … Read more

A Case Study of Joint Online Truck Scheduling and Inventory Management for Multiple Warehouses

For a real world problem — transporting pallets between warehouses in order to guarantee sufficient supply for known and additional stochastic demand — we propose a solution approach via convex relaxation of an integer programming formulation, suitable for online optimization. The essential new element linking routing and inventory management is a convex piecewise linear cost … Read more

Linear Programming Lower Bounds for Minimum Converter Wavelength Assignment in Optical Networks

In this paper, we study the conflict-free assignment of wavelengths to lightpaths in an optical network with the opportunity to place wavelength converters. To benchmark heuristics for the problem, we develop integer programming formulations and study their properties. Moreover, we study the computational performance of the column generation algorithm for solving the linear relaxation of … Read more

On generalized branching methods for mixed integer programming

In this paper we present a restructuring of the computations in Lenstra’s methods for solving mixed integer linear programs. We show that the problem of finding a good branching hyperplane can be formulated on an adjoint lattice of the Kernel lattice of the equality constraints without requiring any dimension reduction. As a consequence the short … Read more

Decomposition in Integer Programming

Both cutting plane methods and traditional decomposition methods are procedures that compute a bound on the optimal value of an integer linear program (ILP) by constructing an approximation to the convex hull of feasible solutions. This approximation is obtained by intersecting the polyhedron associated with the continuous relaxation, which has an explicit representation, with an … Read more

Sequential pairing of mixed integer inequalities

We present a scheme for generating new valid inequalities for mixed integer programs by taking pair-wise combinations of existing valid inequalities. Our scheme is related to mixed integer rounding and mixing. The scheme is in general sequence-dependent and therefore leads to an exponential number of inequalities. For some important cases, we identify combination sequences that … Read more