A Branch-and-Cut Algorithm for the Single Commodity Uncapacitated Fixed Charge Network Flow Problem.

We present a branch-and-cut algorithm to solve the single commodity uncapacitated fixed charge network flow problem, which includes the Steiner tree problem, uncapacitated lot-sizing problems, and the fixed charge transportation problem as special cases. The cuts used are simple dicut inequalities and their variants. A crucial problem when separating these inequalities is to find the right cut set on which to generate the inequalities. The prototype branch-and-cut system, bc-nd includes a separation heuristic for the dicut inequalities, and problem specific primal heuristics, branching and pruning rules.