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Structure-driven fix-and-propagate heuristics for mixed integer programming

Please always quote using this URN: urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-65387
  • Primal heuristics play an important role in the solving of mixed integer programs (MIPs). They often provide good feasible solutions early in the solving process and help to solve instances to optimality faster. In this paper, we present a scheme for primal start heuristics that can be executed without previous knowledge of an LP solution or a previously found integer feasible solution. It uses global structures available within MIP solvers to iteratively fix integer variables and propagate these fixings. Thereby, fixings are determined based on the predicted impact they have on the subsequent domain propagation. If sufficiently many variables can be fixed that way, the resulting problem is solved as an LP and the solution is rounded. If the rounded solution did not provide a feasible solution already, a sub-MIP is solved for the neighborhood defined by the variable fixings performed in the first phase. The global structures help to define a neighborhood that is with high probability significantly easier to process while (hopefully) still containing good feasible solutions. We present three primal heuristics that use this scheme based on different global structures. Our computational experiments on standard MIP test sets show that the proposed heuristics find solutions for about three out of five instances and therewith help to improve several performance measures for MIP solvers, including the primal integral and the average solving time.

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Author:Gerald GamrathORCiD, Timo BertholdORCiD, Stefan Heinz, Michael Winkler
Document Type:ZIB-Report
Tag:domain propagation; fix-and-propagate; large neighborhood search; mixed-integer programming; primal heuristics
MSC-Classification:90-XX OPERATIONS RESEARCH, MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING / 90Cxx Mathematical programming [See also 49Mxx, 65Kxx] / 90C10 Integer programming
90-XX OPERATIONS RESEARCH, MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING / 90Cxx Mathematical programming [See also 49Mxx, 65Kxx] / 90C11 Mixed integer programming
90-XX OPERATIONS RESEARCH, MATHEMATICAL PROGRAMMING / 90Cxx Mathematical programming [See also 49Mxx, 65Kxx] / 90C59 Approximation methods and heuristics
Date of first Publication:2017/10/25
Series (Serial Number):ZIB-Report (17-56)
ISSN:1438-0064
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s12532-019-00159-1
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