International Business Machines Corporation

Pinar Keskinocak

Seshashayee Sankarshana Murthy

Brenda Lynn Dietrich

Frederick Yung-Fung Wu

Rama Kalyani Tirumala Akkiraju

John Nathan Rachlin

Prediction methods that anticipate the outcome of a detailed optimization step are used in lieu of or in conjunction with actual optimization to improve response time and reduce required computational resources for optimization problems having a hierarchical structure. Decomposition of the optimization problem into sub-problems and sub-sub-problems is, itself, an optimization process which is iteratively performed while preferably guided by prediction of the quality of solutions to the problems into which the &ldquo;master&rdquo; optimization problem may be decomposed. Prediction also reduces the requirements for computational resources and allows more decompositions to be examined within the available time in order to arrive at a more nearly optimal decomposition as well as a more nearly optimal solution. Prediction is selectively used when it is determined that such a benefit is probable.

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Pinar Keskinocak