abstract
- © 2022 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.Many optimization applications require the final value of decision variables to be integer. In many cases, the relaxed optimal solution does not satisfy the integrality constraint; therefore, the problem must be solved using integer or mix-integer programming algorithms with significant computational effort and most likely a worsen objective function value. The contribution of this paper is two-fold: (a) identification of a type of problems in which the relaxed optimal objective function value can be kept at the implementation phase by modifying the planning horizon and (b) identification of a multi-period-based solution procedure. Three small instances are provided in order to illustrate the methodology as well as the economic impact involved. In addition, a fourth industrial-scale case is included for the benefit of practitioners. This work shows that business profit can be increased for pseudo-continuous-integer periodical linear problems by identifying optimal decisionmaking periods.