4 A single product maritime inventory routing problem in which the production and con5 sumption rates vary over the planning horizon is studied. The problem includes a heteroge6 neous fleet and multiple production and consumption ports with limited storage capacity. 7 Two discrete time formulations are developed. One is a standard formulation and the other 8 is a fixed charge network flow refor...

Difficult discrete optimization problems are often solved using a Branch and Bound approach. Resolution search is an alternate approach proposed by Chvátal for 0-1 problems, allowing more flexibility in the search process. In this paper, we generalize the Resolution Search to any discrete problem.

We propose an exact branch-and-bound algorithm for the problem of maximizing the minimum machine completion time on identical parallel machines. The proposed algorithm is based on tight lower and upper bounds aswell as an effective symmetry-breaking branching strategy. Computational results performed on a large set of randomly generated instances attest to the efficacy of the proposed algorithm.

This paper reviews tools which have great potential for reducing the difficulty of solving IP (and also MIP) problems, if well implemented in solvers. Recent experiments with Branch and Bound solvers, in connection with “Short Start Features”, have shown that implementations need and can still be improved. Concepts which are likely to be specially important for (0,1) MIP are pointed out.

A novel approach to pure 0-1 integer programming problems called Resolution Search has been proposed by Chvatal (l997) as an alternative to implicit enumeration, with a demonstration that the method can yield more effective branching strategies. We show that an earlier method called Dynamic Branch-and-Bound (DB&B), due to Glover and Tangedahl (1976), yields the same branching strategies as Reso...

Booth and Cox proposed the E(s) criterion for constructing twolevel supersaturated designs. Nguyen [Technometrics 38 (1996) 69– 73] and Tang and Wu [Canad. J. Statist 25 (1997) 191–201] independently derived a lower bound for E(s). This lower bound can be achieved only when m is a multiple of N − 1, where m is the number of factors and N is the run size. We present a method that uses difference...

We examine a basic stochastic sequencing model with due dates as decisions. The objective is to make due dates as tight as possible while meeting service level constraints. We develop an optimizing procedure using branch and bound, and we evaluate the performance of heuristic procedures as well.

Flowshop is an example of a classic hard combinatorial problem. Branch-and-bound is a technique commonly used for solving such hard problems. Together, the two can be used as a benchmark of maturity of parallel processing environment. Grid systems pose a number of hurdles which must be overcome in practical applications. We give a report on applying parallel branch-and-bound for flowshop in gri...

We describe improvements to Smith’s branch-and-bound (B&B) algorithm for the Euclidean Steiner problem in IR. Nodes in the B&B tree correspond to full Steiner topologies associated with a subset of the terminal nodes, and branching is accomplished by “merging” a new terminal node with each edge in the current Steiner tree. For a given topology we use a conic formulation for the problem of locat...