Zero-one integer programs with few constraints - Efficient branch and bound algorithms (Q1073718)

The 0-1 integer programming problem and its special case, the 0-1 knapsack problem are frequently encountered in modeling various design and decision making processes. This paper is a follow-up paper to an earlier paper of the authors [ibid. 21, 213-224 (1985; Zbl 0569.90057)] and deals with the development of an effective solution procedure for 0-1 integer programs with few constraints. Detailed computational experiments are carried out and different separation, branching and bounding rules are compared using an experimental branch and bound code. An efficient branch and bound procedure is developed, tested and compared with previously developed optimal algorithms. It is suggested that this procedure may also be used as a heuristic method for large problems by early termination of the tree search. This scheme is tested and found to be very effective.