Patent ID: 8429000

Claim:
A computer system comprising: a processor; and a memory, communicatively coupled to the processor; wherein the computer system is configured to perform a method of minimizing the cost of a vendor supply chain, the method comprising: identifying an objective function to be minimized related to the cost of the vendor supply chain, subject to one or more constraints, wherein the one or more constraints or the objective function is nonlinear; determining an initial feasible basis by the computing device; determining an entering variable to enter the initial feasible basis, wherein the entering variable is from a particular special ordered set and there are no other variables in the initial feasible basis from the particular special ordered set, or is adjacent to an exactly one variable in the initial feasible basis that is from the particular special ordered set; determining that there is an exiting variable in the initial feasible basis; based on the determination that there is an exiting variable in the initial feasible basis, and while there is an exiting variable in the feasible basis, iterating over the following steps: removing the exiting variable from the feasible basis, adding the entering variable to the feasible basis, determining a new entering variable to be the entering variable, wherein: the new entering variable is from a particular special ordered set and there are no other variables in the feasible basis from the particular special ordered set, or the new entering variable is adjacent to an exactly one variable in the feasible basis that is from the particular special ordered set, and determining if there is a new exiting variable in the feasible basis to be the exiting variable; and outputting the final feasible basis.