Plain vanilla K-means clustering is prone to produce unbalanced clusters and suffers from outlier sensitivity. To mitigate both shortcomings, we formulate a joint outlier-detection and clustering problem, which assigns a prescribed number of datapoints to an auxiliary outlier cluster and performs cardinality-constrained K-means clustering on the residual dataset. We cast this problem as a mixed...

In this paper the problem of finding the sparsest (i.e., minimum cardinality) critical k-tuple including one arbitrarily specified measurement is considered. The solution to this problem can be used to identify weak points in the measurement set, or aid the placement of new meters. The critical k-tuple problem is a combinatorial generalization of the critical measurement calculation problem. Us...

Upgradeability problems are a critical issue in modern operating systems. The problem consists in finding the “best” solution according to some criteria, to install, remove or upgrade packages in a given installation. This is a difficult problem: the complexity of the upgradeability problem is NP complete and modern OS contain a huge number of packages (often more than 20 000 packages in a Linu...

A new continuous time MILP model for the short-term scheduling of multipurpose batch plants is presented. The proposed model relies on the State Task Network (STN) and addresses the general problem of batch scheduling, accounting for resource (utility) constraints, variable batch sizes and processing times, various storage policies (UIS/FIS/NIS/ZW), batch mixing/splitting, and sequencedependent...

We consider the application of mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) solvers to the minimization of submodular functions. We evaluate common large-scale linear-programming (LP) techniques (e.g., column generation, row generation, dual stabilization) for solving a LP reformulation of the submodular minimization (SM) problem. We present heuristics based on the LP framework and a MILP solver. We...

This paper focuses on the problem of supplying the workstations of assembly lines with components during the production process. For that specific problem, this paper presents a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP) that aims at minimizing the energy consumption of the supplying strategy. More specifically, in contrast of the usual formulations that only consider component flows, this MILP handle...

A new continuous-time MILP model for the short-term scheduling of multipurpose batch plants is presented. The proposed model relies on the idea of the State Task Network (STN) and addresses the general problem of batch scheduling, accounting for resources other than equipment (utilities), variable batch sizes and processing times, various storage policies (UIS/FIS/NIS/ZW) and batch splitting/mi...

Quality function deployment (QFD) is a product development process performed to maximize customer satisfaction. In the QFD, the design requirements (DRs) affecting the product performance are primarily identified, and product performance is improved to optimize customer needs (CNs). For product development, determining the fulfillment levels of design requirements (DRs) is crucial during QFD op...

A mathematical programming model for a class of single machine family scheduling problems is described in this technical report, with the aim of comparing the performance in solving the scheduling problem by means of mathematical programming with the performance obtained when using optimal control strategies, that can be derived from the application of a dynamic programming-based methodology pr...

The problem of laying out a survivable IP network over a WDM network is considered. The links of the IP network are realized by unprotected lightpaths of the WDM network, and the lightpaths must be routed so that the IP network remains connected after any fault. Crochat and Le Boudec [2] introduced the problem for the case of single fiber-link failures, and Modiano and Narula-Tam [5] provided a...