Mixed logical-linear programming

Mixed logical/linear programming (MLLP) is an extension of mixed integer/li near programming (MILP). It can represent the discrete elements of a proble m with logical propositions and provides a more natural modeling framework than MILP. It can also have computational advantages, partly because it eli minates integer variables when they serve no purpose, provides alternatives to the traditional continuous relaxation, and applies logic processing alg orithms. This paper surveys previous work and attempts to organize ideas as sociated with MLLP, some old and some new, into a coherent framework. It ar ticulates potential advantages of MLLP's wider choice of modeling and solut ion options and illustrates some of them with computational experiments. (C ) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.