In this work, we consider the integrated problem of locomotive scheduling and driver rostering in rail freight companies. Our aim is to compute an optimal simultaneous assignment of locomotives and drivers to the trains listed in a given order book. Mathematically, this leads to the combination of a set-packing problem with compatibility constraints and a … Read more
Cut-generating linear programs (CGLPs) play a key role as a separation oracle to produce valid inequalities for the feasible region of mixed-integer programs. When incorporated inside branch-and-bound, the cutting planes obtained from CGLPs help to tighten relaxations and improve dual bounds. However, running the CGLPs at the nodes of the branch-and-bound tree is computationally cumbersome … Read more
General quadratic optimization problems with linear constraints and additional indicator constraints on the variables are studied. Based on the well-known perspective reformulation for mixed-integer quadratic optimization problems, projective cuts are introduced as new valid inequalities for the general problem. The key idea behind the theory of these cutting planes is the projection of the continuous … Read more
We propose a successive generation of cutting inequalities for binary quadratic optimization problems. Multiple cutting inequalities are successively generated for the convex hull of the set of the optimal solutions $\subset \{0, 1\}^n$, while the standard cutting inequalities are used for the convex hull of the feasible region. An arbitrary linear inequality with integer coefficients … Read more
In this paper, we provide an equivalent condition for the Chvatal-Gomory (CG) closure of a closed convex set to be finitely-generated. Using this result, we are able to prove that, for any closed convex set that can be written as the Minkowski sum of a compact convex set and a closed convex cone, its CG … Read more
We propose a method to generate cutting-planes from multiple covers of knapsack constraints. The covers may come from different knapsack inequalities if the weights in the inequalities form a totally-ordered set. Thus, we introduce and study the structure of a totally-ordered multiple knapsack set. The valid multi-cover inequalities we derive for its convex hull have … Read more
Bilevel optimization is an increasingly important tool to model hierarchical decision making. However, the ability of modeling such settings makes bilevel problems hard to solve in theory and practice. In this paper, we add on the general difficulty of this class of problems by further incorporating convex black-box constraints in the lower level. For this … Read more
Cutting planes are a key ingredient to successfully solve mixed-integer linear programs. For specific problems, their strength is often theoretically assessed by showing that they are facet-defining for the corresponding mixed-integer hull. In this paper we experimentally investigate the dimensions of faces induced by general-purpose cutting planes generated by a state-of-the-art solver. Therefore, we relate … Read more
Inverse optimization is the problem of determining the values of missing input parameters that are closest to given estimates and that will make a given solution optimal. This study is concerned with the relationship of a particular inverse mixed integer linear optimization problem (MILPs) to both the original problem and the separation problem associated with … Read more
Despite the success of branch-and-cut methods for solving mixed integer bilevel linear optimization problems (MIBLPs) in practice, there have remained some gaps in the theory surrounding these methods. In this paper, we take a first step towards laying out a theory of valid inequalities and cutting-plane methods for MIBLPs that parallels the existing theory for … Read more