for installing a large number of sizes and types of items (e.g., machines) over time so as to optimize some measure (e.g., initial capital investment), subject to various resource constraints. Examples of this problem are scheduling the installation of point-of-sale terminals in supermarket and retail chains, and teller terminals in banks. We have formulated the installation scheduling problem ...

In this paper we consider a packing problem arising in inventory allocation applications, where the operational cost for packing the bins is comparable, or even higher, than the cost of the bins (and of the items) themselves. This is the case, for example, of warehouses that have to manage a large number of different customers (e.g., stores), each requiring a given set of items. For this proble...

We study a generic minimization problem with separable non-convex piecewise linear costs, showing that the linear programming (LP) relaxation of three textbook mixed-integer programming formulations each approximates the cost function by its lower convex envelope. We also show a relationship between this result and classical Lagrangian duality theory.