A constrained based approach for solving the multi-period single sourcing problem

In this paper we propose a constrained based search algorithm for solving multi-period single-sourcing problems. In particular, we generalize the strategy of releasing nonbasic variables from their bounds, combined with the active constraint method that was developed for the Generalized Assignment Problem to a class of convex assignment problems. We then identify an important subclass of problems, containing many variants of the multi-period single-sourcing problem, as well as variants of the original assignment problems.