This paper presents a method that combines Benders decomposition and column generation to solve the multi-activity tour scheduling problem. The Benders decomposition approach iterates between a master problem that links daily shifts with tour patterns and a set of daily subproblems that assign work activities and breaks to the shifts. Due to its structure, the master problem is solved by column...

This paper describes a Benders decomposition algorithm capable of efficiently solving large-scale instances of the well-known multi-commodity capacitated network design problem with demand uncertainty. The problem is important because it models many real-world applications, including telecommunications, transportation, and logistics. This problem has been tackled in the literature with meta-heu...

We present a branch-and-bound algorithm for discretely-constrained mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints (DC-MPEC). This is a class of bilevel programs with an integer program in the upper-level and a complementarity problem in the lower-level. The algorithm builds on the work by Gabriel et al. (2010) and uses Benders decomposition to form a master problem and a subproblem. The new...

We consider a supply chain setting where multiple uncapacitated facilities serve a set of customers with a single product. The majority of literature on such problems requires assigning all of any given customer’s demand to a single facility. While this single-sourcing strategy is optimal under linear (or concave) cost structures, it will often be suboptimal under the nonlinear costs that arise...

In this paper, a general scheme for generating extra cuts during the execution of a Benders decomposition algorithm is presented. These cuts are based on feasible and infeasible master problem solutions generated by means of a heuristic. This article includes general guidelines and a case study with a fixed charge network design problem. Computational tests with instances of this problem show t...

In this paper, a general scheme for generating extra cuts during the execution of a Benders decomposition algorithm is presented. These cuts are based on feasible and infeasible master problem solutions generated by means of a heuristic. This article includes general guidelines and a case study with a fixed charge network design problem. Computational tests with instances of this problem show t...

Consider a large mixed integer linear problem where structure of the constraint matrix is sparse, with independent blocks, and coupling constraints and variables. There is one of the groups of constraints to make difficult the application of Benders scheme decomposition. In this work, we propose the following algorithm; a Lagrangian relaxation is made on the mentioned set of constraints; we pre...

A recent paper by Heinz and Beck (CPAIOR 2012) found that mixed integer software has become competitive with or superior to logic-based Benders decomposition for the solution of facility assignment and scheduling problems. Their implementation of Benders differs, however, from that described in the literature they cite and therefore results in much slower performance than previously reported. W...

In a recent work, Muter et al. (2013a) identified and characterized a general class of linear programming (LP) problems known as problems with column-dependent-rows (CDR-problems). These LPs feature two sets of constraints with mutually exclusive groups of variables in addition to a set of structural linking constraints, in which variables from both groups appear together. In a typical CDR-prob...