ISMP Conference - Copenhagen

Dash made quite an impact at the recent ISMP Conference in Copenhagen. Our primary purpose was to launch our Academic Partner Programme (APP) in Europe, and this was very sucessful. Our distinctive stand and advert on the back of the conference programme generated a lot of interest. The APP enables universities to use state-of-the-art commercial optimisation and modelling software at no cost. Key features include access to the latest edition of Xpress-MP, with a full functional and full capacity licence for up to 10 computers. If you haven't taken advantage yet, read full details and apply online here.

Dash gave three presentations at ISMP.

• Alkis Vazacopoulos talked about how CP & MIP can work together to solve planning and scheduling problems. Case studies from two industrial partners, Babot SA and BASF AG, from a recent R&D project, demonstrated how the technology has been proven. Alkis finished by announcing more details of the new Xpress-CP product which will make this technology more widely available. Xpress-CP will be released in 2004 Q1. [download presentation pdf]
• Michael Perregard talked about a significant new development in the Optimizer: lift and project cuts. In some sense they can be seen as an extension of Gomory cuts, but in general they result in much tighter cuts and thus a reduction in both the time to prove optimality, and in the time to identify a solution to within a specified tolerance. Michael`s presentation showed how Dash have worked to implement the cuts in the most efficient and effective way, and the plots and diagrams presented gave a particularly useful insight. Lift and project cuts are now available in Xpress-MP and will be released to all customers with support with the forthcoming Xpress-MP 2004 release, following the user meeting. [download presentation pdf]
• Finally James Tebboth gave a demonstration of Xpress-MP, which showed how easy it is to develop models. Examples were give of an Markowitz portfolio selection model modelled using the solved MIQP, a non-linear programming (NLP) model solved using SLP, and an economic lot sizing model solved using a cut generation method written in the Mosel language.

ISMP is the principle worldwide conference for mathematical programming and optimisation. It takes place every three years and alternates between Europe and America. It was held this year at the Technical University of Denmark, DTU, in Copenhagen, 18-22 August with over 1000 people attending. The next conference will be in Rio de Janeiro in 2006 - hope to see you there!