Paper Info
Title
Fixed-Charge Transportation with Product Blending
Abstract
Numerous planning models within the chemical, petroleum, and process industries involve coordinating the movement of raw materials in distribution networks so they can be blended into final products. The uncapacitated fixed-charge transportation problem with blending (FCTPwB) studied in this paper captures a core structure encountered in many of these environments. We model the FCTPwB as a mixed-integer linear program, and we derive two classes of facets, both exponential in size, for the convex hull of solutions for the problem with a single consumer and show that they can be separated in polynomial time. Furthermore, we prove that, in certain situations, these classes of facets along with the continuous relaxation of the original constraints yield a description of the convex hull. Finally, we present a computational study that demonstrates that these classes of facets are effective in reducing the integrality gap and solution time for more general instances of the FCTPwB with arc capacities and multiple consumers.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1287/trsc.1110.0381
Transportation Science
Keywords
Field
DocType
convex hull,core structure,arc capacity,distribution network,polynomial time,uncapacitated fixed-charge transportation problem,certain situation,continuous relaxation,solution time,product blending,fixed-charge transportation,computational study,fixed costs,chemical industry,mixed integer programming,petroleum industry
Mathematical optimization,Exponential function,Fixed charge,Fixed cost,Convex hull,Transportation theory,Integer programming,Linear programming,Time complexity,Mathematics,Operations management
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
46
2
0041-1655
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
9
0.53
10
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Dimitri J. Papageorgiou1675.00
Alejandro Toriello2669.04
George L. Nemhauser33035354.58
Martin Savelsbergh42624190.83