Assigning Orders to Couriers in Meal Delivery via Integer Programming

We investigate some optimization models for meal delivery that stem from a collaboration with an Italian company mainly operating in Rome. The focus of this company is on top-end customers, and the company pursues high Quality of Service through a careful management of delays. We then design optimization models and algorithms for dispatching orders to … Read more

The Travelling Salesman Problem with positional consistency constraints: an application to healthcare services

In this paper we study the Consistent Traveling Salesman Problem with positional consistency constraints (CTSP), where we seek to generate a set of routes with minimum cost, in which all the clients that are visited in several routes require total positional consistency, that is, they need to appear in the same relative position in all … Read more

A Simple Algorithm for Online Decision Making

\(\) Motivated by recent progress on online linear programming (OLP), we study the online decision making problem (ODMP) as a natural generalization of OLP. In ODMP, there exists a single decision maker who makes a series of decisions spread out over a total of \(T\) time stages. At each time stage, the decision maker makes … Read more

Recognition of Facets for Knapsack Polytope is DP-complete

DP  is a complexity class that is the class of all languages that are the intersection of a language in NP and a language in co-NP, as coined by Papadimitriou and Yannakakis. In this paper, we will establish that, recognizing a facet for the knapsack polytope is DP-complete, as conjectured by Hartvigsen and Zemel in … Read more

A Unified Framework for Symmetry Handling

Handling symmetries in optimization problems is essential for devising efficient solution methods. In this article, we present a general framework that captures many of the already existing symmetry handling methods. While these methods are mostly discussed independently from each other, our framework allows to apply different methods simultaneously and thus outperforming their individual effect. Moreover, … Read more

Enhancements of Discretization Approaches for Non-Convex Mixed-Integer Quadratically Constraint Quadratic Programming: Part I

We study mixed-integer programming (MIP) relaxation techniques for the solution of non-convex mixed-integer quadratically constrained quadratic programs (MIQCQPs). We present MIP relaxation methods for non-convex continuous variable products. In Part I, we consider MIP relaxations based on separable reformulation. The main focus is the introduction of the enhanced separable MIP relaxation for non-convex quadratic products … Read more

The Largest Unsolved QAP Instance Tai256c Can Be Converted into A 256-dimensional Simple BQOP with A Single Cardinality Constraint

Tai256c is the largest unsolved quadratic assignment problem (QAP) instance in QAPLIB; a 1.48\% gap remains between the best known feasible objective value and lower bound of the unknown optimal value. This paper shows that the instance can be converted into a 256 dimensional binary quadratic optimization problem (BQOP) with a single cardinality constraint which … Read more

Improving reliability with optimal allocation of maintenance resources: an application to power distribution networks

Power distribution networks should strive for reliable delivery of energy. In this paper, we support this endeavor by addressing the Maintenance Resources Allocation Problem (MRAP). This problem consists of scheduling preventive maintenance plans on the equipment of distribution networks for a planning horizon, seeking the best trade-offs between system reliability and maintenance budgets. We propose … Read more

On the Exactness of Dantzig-Wolfe Relaxation for Rank Constrained Optimization Problems

In the rank-constrained optimization problem (RCOP), it minimizes a linear objective function over a prespecified closed rank-constrained domain set and $m$ generic two-sided linear matrix inequalities. Motivated by the Dantzig-Wolfe (DW) decomposition, a popular approach of solving many nonconvex optimization problems, we investigate the strength of DW relaxation (DWR) of the RCOP, which admits the … Read more

A Consensus-Based Alternating Direction Method for Mixed-Integer and PDE-Constrained Gas Transport Problems

We consider dynamic gas transport optimization problems, which lead to large-scale and nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems (MINLPs) on graphs. Usually, the resulting instances are too challenging to be solved by state-of-the-art MINLP solvers. In this paper, we use graph decompositions to obtain multiple optimization problems on smaller blocks, which can be solved in parallel … Read more