Abstract
This paper presents a new warmstarting technique in the context of a primal-dual column generation method applied to solve a particular class of combinatorial optimization problems. The technique relies on calculating an initial point and on solving auxiliary linear optimization problems to determine the step direction needed to fully restore primal and dual feasibilities after new columns arrive. Conditions on the maximum size of the cuts and on a suitable initial point are discussed. Additionally, the strategy ensures that the duality gap of the warmstart is bounded by the old duality gap multiplied with a (small) constant, which depends on the relation between the old and modified problems. Computational experiments demonstrate the gains achieved when compared to a coldstart approach.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the referees for their useful comments and suggestions which allowed us to improve the quality and presentation of this paper. Pablo González-Brevis would like to thank the support given by Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad del Desarrollo and Beca Presidente de la República (CONICYT) from Chile. Jacek Gondzio was supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant EP/G060169/1.
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Gondzio, J., González-Brevis, P. A new warmstarting strategy for the primal-dual column generation method. Math. Program. 152, 113–146 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10107-014-0779-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10107-014-0779-8
Keywords
- Interior point methods
- Warmstarting
- Column generation
- Linear programming
- Cutting stock problem
- Vehicle routing problem with time windows