Nonlinear Programming - Applicability

Applicability

A typical nonconvex problem is that of optimising transportation costs by selection from a set of transportion methods, one or more of which exhibit economies of scale, with various connectivities and capacity constraints. An example would be petroleum product transport given a selection or combination of pipeline, rail tanker, road tanker, river barge, or coastal tankship. Owing to economic batch size the cost functions may have discontinuities in addition to smooth changes.