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Branch‐and‐Bound Strategies for the Log Bucking Problem
Author(s) -
Bobrowski Paul M.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
decision sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.238
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1540-5915
pISSN - 0011-7315
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-5915.1990.tb00313.x
Subject(s) - branch and bound , computer science , mathematical optimization , key (lock) , tree (set theory) , branching (polymer chemistry) , dynamic programming , upper and lower bounds , sensitivity (control systems) , process (computing) , production (economics) , mathematics , combinatorics , engineering , mathematical analysis , materials science , computer security , electronic engineering , economics , composite material , macroeconomics , operating system
Tree bucking is the initial production process in converting felled trees into useable wood products. This process has been previously modelled as a dynamic programming problem. Unlike other production problems that have been modelled as dynamic programming problems, there have been no serious attempts to formulate this problem as a branch‐and‐bound model and then examine the model's performance. This research develops the tree bucking problem as a branch‐and‐bound model to be tested by varying several parameters. The testing is performed in two phases: (1) a sensitivity analysis is performed to test two key parameters used by the model, and (2) branching strategies are tested on various problem scenarios. The size of the solution sets searched by the technique vary from as low as 40 to as many as 41,000 possible combinations.