This paper investigates a polyhedral approach to handle symmetries in mixed-binary programs. We study symretopes, i.e., the convex hulls of all binary vectors that are lexicographically maximal in their orbit with respect to the symmetry group. These polytopes turn out to be quite complex. For practical use, we therefore develop an integer programming formulation with … Read more
Cardinality constraints enforce an upper bound on the number of variables that can be nonzero. This article investigates linear programs with cardinality constraints that mutually overlap, i.e., share variables. We present the components of a branch-and-cut solution approach, including new branching rules that exploit the structure of the corresponding conflict hypergraph. We also investigate valid … Read more
The seminal paper by Barzilai and Borwein [IMA J. Numer. Anal. 8 (1988)] has given rise to an extensive investigation aimed at developing effective gradient methods, able to deal with large-scale optimization problems. Several steplength rules have been first designed for unconstrained quadratic problems and then extended to general nonlinear problems; these rules share the … Read more
We present a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) formulation of a UAV path optimization problem in an attempt to find the globally optimum solution. As objective functions in UAV path optimization problems typically tend to be non-convex, traditional optimization solvers (typically local solvers) are prone to local optima, which lead to severely sub-optimal controls. For the … Read more
We study the polyhedral structure of a generalization of a mixing set described by the intersection of two mixing sets with two shared continuous variables, where one continuous variable has a positive coefficient in one mixing set, and a negative coefficient in the other. Our developments are motivated from a key substructure of linear joint … Read more
We study a multiechelon supply chain model that consists of a production level and several transportation levels, where the demands can exist in the production echelon as well as any transportation echelons. With the presence of stationary production capacity and general cost functions, our model integrates production, inventory and transportation decisions and generalizes existing literature … Read more
This paper considers the problem of cyclic ow shop robotic cell scheduling deploying several single and dual gripper robots. In this problem, dierent part types are successively processed on multiple machines with dierent pickup criteria including free pickup, pickup within time-windows and no-waiting times. The parts are transported between the machines by the robots. We … Read more
This paper presents novel convergence results for the Augmented Lagrangian based Alternating Direction Inexact Newton method (ALADIN) in the context of distributed convex optimization. It is shown that ALADIN converges for a large class of convex optimization problems from any starting point to minimizers without needing line-search or other globalization routines. Under additional regularity assumptions, … Read more
In this work we introduce profit-oriented capacitated ring arborescence problems and present exact and heuristic algorithms. These combinatorial network design problems ask for optimized bi-level networks taking into account arc costs and node profits. Solutions combine circuits on the inner level with arborescences on the outer level of the networks. We consider the prize-collecting, the … Read more
The design of hub-and-spoke transport networks is a strategic planning problem, as the choice of hub locations has to remain unchanged for long time periods. However, strikes, disasters or traffic breakdown can lead to the unavailability of a hub for a short period of time. Therefore it is important to consider such events already in … Read more