Direct solution to constrained tropical optimization problems with application to project scheduling

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new approach to solving constrained tropical optimization problems with a focus on project scheduling, providing explicit solutions and demonstrating practical application through a real-world example.

Contribution

It extends existing tropical optimization problems by incorporating a more general objective and additional constraints, offering a complete explicit solution method.

Findings

Explicit solution for the new tropical optimization problem.

Application to a real-world project scheduling problem.

Numerical example demonstrating the solution approach.

Abstract

We examine a new optimization problem formulated in the tropical mathematics setting as a further extension of certain known problems. The problem is to minimize a nonlinear objective function, which is defined on vectors over an idempotent semifield by using multiplicative conjugate transposition, subject to inequality constraints. As compared to the known problems, the new one has a more general objective function and additional constraints. We provide a complete solution in an explicit form to the problem by using an approach that introduces an auxiliary variable to represent the values of the objective function, and then reduces the initial problem to a parametrized vector inequality. The minimum of the objective function is evaluated by applying the existence conditions for the solution of this inequality. A complete solution to the problem is given by solving the parametrized inequality, provided the parameter is set to the minimum value. As a consequence, we obtain solutions to new special cases of the general problem. To illustrate the application of the results, we solve a real-world problem drawn from time-constrained project scheduling, and offer a representative numerical example.