The Flow Set with Partial Order

The flow set with partial order is a mixed-integer set described by a budget on total flow and a partial order on the arcs that may carry positive flow. This set is a common substructure of resource allocation and scheduling problems with precedence constraints and robust network flow problems under demand/capacity uncertainty. We give a … Read more

MIP-based heuristic for non-standard 3D-packing problems

This paper is the continuation of a previous work (Fasano 2004), dedicated to a MIP formulation for non-standard three-dimensional packing issues, with additional conditions. The Single Bin Packing problem (Basic Problem) is considered and its MIP formulation shortly surveyed, together with some possible extensions, including balancing, tetris-like items and non-standard domains. A MIP-based heuristic is … Read more

A MIP Approach for some Practical Packing Problems: Balancing Constraints and Tetris-like Items

This paper considers packing problems with balancing conditions and items consisting of clusters of parallelepipeds (mutually orthogonal, i.e. tetris-like items). This issue is quite frequent in space engineering and a real-world application deals with the Automated Transfer Vehicle project (funded by the European Space Agency), at present under development. A Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) approach … Read more

Expressing Combinatorial Optimization Problems by Systems of Polynomial Equations and the Nullstellensatz

Systems of polynomial equations over the complex or real numbers can be used to model combinatorial problems. In this way, a combinatorial problem is feasible (e.g. a graph is 3-colorable, hamiltonian, etc.) if and only if a related system of polynomial equations has a solution. In the first part of this paper, we construct new … Read more

Separation Algorithms for 0-1 Knapsack Polytopes

Valid inequalities for 0-1 knapsack polytopes often prove useful when tackling hard 0-1 Linear Programming problems. To use such inequalities effectively, one needs separation algorithms for them, i.e., routines for detecting when they are violated. We show that the separation problems for the so-called extended cover and weight inequalities can be solved exactly in O(nb) … Read more

On the strength of cut-based inequalities for capacitated network design polyhedra

In this paper we study capacitated network design problems, differentiating directed, bidirected and undirected link capacity models. We complement existing polyhedral results for the three variants by new classes of facet-defining valid inequalities and unified lifting results. For this, we study the restriction of the problems to a cut of the network. First, we show … Read more

Improving a Formulation of the Quadratic Knapsack Problem

The Quadratic Knapsack Problem can be formulated, using an idea of Glover, as a mixed 0-1 linear program with only 2n variables. We present a simple method for strengthening that formulation, which gives good results when the profit matrix is dense and non-negative. Citation Working Paper, Department of Management Science, Lancaster University, May 2007. Article … Read more

Some Relations Between Facets of Low- and High-Dimensional Group Problems

In this paper, we introduce an operation that creates families of facet-defining inequalities for high-dimensional infinite group problems using facet-defining inequalities of lower-dimensional group problems. We call this family sequential-merge inequalities because they are produced by applying two group cuts one after the other and because the resultant inequality depends on the order of the … Read more

An Integer Programming Approach to the Path Selection Problems

We consider two types of path selection problems defined on arc-capacitated networks. Given an arc-capacitated network and a set of selected ordered pairs of nodes (commodity) each of which has a demand quantity, the first problem is to select a subset of commodities and setup one path for each chosen commodity to maximize profit, while … Read more

Computations with Disjunctive Cuts for Two-Stage Stochastic Mixed Integer Programs

Two-stage stochastic mixed-integer programming (SMIP) problems with recourse are generally difficult to solve. This paper presents a first computational study of a disjunctive cutting plane method for stochastic mixed 0-1 programs that uses lift-and-project cuts based on the extensive form of the two-stage SMIP problem. An extension of the method based on where the data … Read more