A New Branch-and-Price-and-Cut Algorithm for One-Dimensional Bin-Packing Problems

Abstract

In this paper, a new branch-and-price-and-cut algorithm is proposed to solve the one-dimensional bin-packing problem (1D-BPP). The 1D-BPP is one of the most fundamental problems in combinatorial optimization and has been extensively studied for decades. Recently, a set of new 500 test instances were proposed for the 1D-BPP, and the best exact algorithm proposed in the literature can optimally solve 167 of these new instances, with a time limit of 1 hour imposed on each execution of the algorithm. The exact algorithm proposed in this paper is based on the classical set-partitioning model for the 1DBPPs and the subset row inequalities. We describe an ad hoc label-setting algorithm to solve the pricing problem, dominance, and fathoming rules to speed up its computation and a new primal heuristic. The exact algorithm can easily handle some practical constraints, such as the incompatibility between the items, and therefore, we also apply it to solve the one-dimensional bin-packing problem with conflicts (1D-BPPC). The proposed method is tested on a large family of 1D-BPP and 1D-BPPC classes of instances. For the 1D-BPP, the proposed method can optimally solve 237 instances of the new set of difficult instances; the largest instance involves 1,003 items and bins of capacity 80,000. For the 1D-BPPC, the experiments show that the method is highly competitive with state-of-the-art methods and that it successfully closed several open 1D-BPPC instances.