Beating the SDP bound for the floor layout problem: A simple combinatorial idea

For many mixed-integer programming (MIP) problems, high-quality dual bounds can be obtained either through advanced formulation techniques coupled with a state-of-the-art MIP solver, or through semi-definite programming (SDP) relaxation hierarchies. In this paper, we introduce an alternative boundin...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Dey, Santanu S. (Author), Huchette, Joey (Contributor), Vielma Centeno, Juan Pablo (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of Toronto Press Inc, 2019-03-22T18:40:46Z.
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Summary:For many mixed-integer programming (MIP) problems, high-quality dual bounds can be obtained either through advanced formulation techniques coupled with a state-of-the-art MIP solver, or through semi-definite programming (SDP) relaxation hierarchies. In this paper, we introduce an alternative bounding approach that exploits the 'combinatorial implosion' effect by solving portions of the original problem and aggregating this information to obtain a global dual bound. We apply this technique to the one-dimensional and two-dimensional floor layout problems and compare it with the bounds generated by both state-of-the-art MIP solvers and by SDP relaxations. Specifically, we prove that the bounds obtained through the proposed technique are at least as good as those obtained through SDP relaxations, and present computational results that these bounds can be significantly stronger and easier to compute than these alternative strategies, particularly for very difficult problem instances.
United States. National Science Foundation. Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant 1122374)
United States. National Science Foundation. Graduate Research Fellowship Program (Grant CMMI-1351619)