An improved model for the parallel row ordering problem

Abstract

This article studies the parallel row ordering problem (PROP), which is NP-hard. The PROP is interesting from both a theoretical and practical point of view. A new mixed-integer programming model for this problem is proposed, which presents a superior performance to that of a former mixed-integer programming model proposed for the problem. With the new model, several problem instances taken from the literature or randomly generated were efficiently solved to optimality. Moreover, it is now possible to efficiently solve problem instances of larger sizes.

Keywords:

• Parallel row ordering problem; facility layout; mixed-integer programming

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their valuable feedback and suggestions which contributed to the improvement of the original version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by the Sichuan Province Miaozi Innovation Project of China [grant number 2017119]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 51705436]; This study was financed in part by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001.