1 Date: September 15, 1998 File
1 date: September 15, 1998 file: mitche2 BRANCH-AND-CUT ALGORITHMS Branch-and-cut methods for general integer FOR INTEGER PROGRAMMING, programming problems are also of great interest Branch-and-cut (see, for example, the papers [4, 7, 11, 16, 17, 22, 28, 30]). It is usually not possible to efficiently Branch-and-cut methods are exact algorithms solve a general integer programming problem us- for integer programming problems. They consist ing just a cutting plane approach, and it is there- of a combination of a cutting plane method fore necessary to also to branch, resulting in a with a branch-and-bound algorithm.These branch-and-cut approach. A pure branch-and- methods work by solving a sequence of lin- bound approach can be sped up considerably by ear programming relaxations of the integer pro- the employment of a cutting plane scheme, ei- gramming problem. Cutting plane methods im- ther just at the top of the tree, or at every node prove the relaxation of the problem to more of the tree. closely approximate the integer programming For general problems, the specialized facets problem, and branch-and-bound algorithms pro- used when solving a specific combinatorial opti- ceed by a sophisticated divide and conquer ap- mization problem are not available. Some use- proach to solve problems. The material in this ful families of general inequalities have been entry builds on the material contained in the developed; these include cuts based on knap- entries on cutting plane and branch-and-bound sack problems [17, 22, 23], Gomory cutting methods. planes [19, 20, 5, 12], lift and project cut- Perhaps the best known branch-and-cut algo- ting planes [29, 33, 3, 4], and Fenchel cutting rithms are those that have been used to solve planes [9].
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