Complexity results and exact algorithms for robust knapsack problems.

This paper studies the robust knapsack problem, for which solutions are, up to a certain point, immune to data uncertainty. We complement the works found in the literature where uncertainty affects only the profits or only the weights of the items by studying the complexity and approximation of the general setting with uncertainty regarding both the profits and the weights, for three different objective functions. Furthermore, we develop a scenario-relaxation algorithm for solving the general problem and present computational results.Knapsack problem; Robustness; Scenario-relaxation algorithm; NP-hard; Approximation;

Robust maximum weighted independent-set problems on interval graphs.

We study the maximum weighted independent-set problem on interval graphs with uncertainty on the vertex weights. We use the absolute robustness criterion and the min-max regret criterion to evaluate solutions. For a discrete scenario set, we find that the problem is NP-hard for each of the robustness criteria; we also provide pseudo-polynomial time algorithms when there is a constant number of scenarios and show that the problem is strongly NP-hard when the set of scenarios is unbounded. When the scenario set is a Cartesian product, we prove that the problem is equivalent to a maximum weighted independent-set problem on the same interval graph but without uncertainty for the first objective function and that the scenario set can be reduced for the second objective function.Combinatorial problems; Computational complexity; Interval graphs; Independent set;

Models for the optimization of promotion campaigns: exact and heuristic algorithms.

This paper presents an optimization model for the selection of sets of clients that will receive an offer for one or more products during a promotion campaign. The complexity of the problem makes it very difficult to produce optimal solutions using standard optimization methods. We propose an alternative set covering formulation and develop a branch-and-price algorithm to solve it. We also describe five heuristics to approximate an optimal solution. Two of these heuristics are algorithms based on restricted versions of the basic formulation, the third is a successive exact k-item knapsack procedure. A heuristic inspired by the Next-Product-To-Buy model and a depth-first branch-and-price heuristic are also presented. Finally, we perform extensive computational experiments for the two formulations as well as for the five heuristics.Promotion campaign; Minimum quantity commitment; Integer programming; Branch-and-price algorithm; Non-approximability; Heuristics; Business-to-business; Business-to-consumer;

Order acceptance and scheduling in a single-machine environment: exact and heuristic algorithms.

In this paper, we develop exact and heuristic algorithms for the order acceptance and scheduling problem in a single-machine environment. We consider the case where a pool consisting of firm planned orders as well as potential orders is available from which an over-demanded company can select. The capacity available for processing the accepted orders is limited and orders are characterized by known processing times, delivery dates, revenues and the weight representing a penalty per unit-time delay beyond the delivery date promised to the customer. We prove the non-approximability of the problem and give two linear formulations that we solve with CPLEX. We devise two exact branch-and-bound procedures able to solve problem instances of practical dimensions. For the solution of large instances, we propose six heuristics. We provide a comparison and comments on the efficiency and quality of the results obtained using both the exact and heuristic algorithms, including the solution of the linear formulations using CPLEX.Order acceptance; Scheduling; Single machine; Branch-and-bound; Heuristics; Firm planned orders;

Project scheduling with modular project completion on a bottleneck resource.

In this paper, we model a research-and-development project as consisting of several modules, with each module containing one or more activities. We examine how to schedule the activities of such a project in order to maximize the expected profit when the activities have a probability of failure and when an activity’s failure can cause its module and thereby the overall project to fail. A module succeeds when at least one of its constituent activities is successfully executed. All activities are scheduled on a scarce resource that is modeled as a single machine. We describe various policy classes, establish the relationship between the classes, develop exact algorithms to optimize over two different classes (one dynamic program and one branch-and-bound algorithm), and examine the computational performance of the algorithms on two randomly generated instance sets.Scheduling; Uncertainty; Research and development; Activity failures; Modular precedence network;

Heuristics for deciding collectively rational consumption behavior

We consider the computational problem of testing whether observed household consumption behavior satisfies the Collective Axiom of Revealed Preferences (CARP). We propose a graph such that the existence of a node-partitioning giving rise to two induced subgraphs that are acyclic implies that the data satisfy CARP. Furthermore, we propose and implement heuristics that are quite fast, that can be used to check reasonably large datasets for CARP and that can be of particular interest when used prior to computationally demanding approaches. Finally, from the computational results we conclude that these heuristics can be effective in testing CARP.Collective model of household consumption; Collective Axiom of Revealed Preference; Pareto efficiency; Directed graph; Graph coloring; Graph partitioning; Acycli subgraph; Heuristics.

Pricing toll roads under uncertainty

We study the toll pricing problem when the non-toll costs on the network are not fixed and can vary over time. We assume that users who take their decisions, after the tolls are fixed, have full information of all costs before making their decision. Toll-setter, on the other hand, do not have any information of the future costs on the network. The only information toll-setter have is historical information (sample) of the network costs. In this work we study this problem on parallel networks and networks with few number of paths in single origin-destination setting. We formulate toll-setting problem in this setting as a distributionally robust optimization problem and propose a method to solve to it. We illustrate the usefulness of our approach by doing numerical experiments using a parallel network