Network Flows Heuristics for Complementary Cell Suppression: An Empirical Evaluation and Extensions

Several network flows heuristics have been suggested in the past for the solution of the complementary suppression problem. However, a limited computational experience using them is reported in the literature, and, moreover, they were only appropriate for two-dimensional tables. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we perform an empirical comparison of two network flows heuristics. They are improved versions of already existing approaches. Second, we show that extensions of network flows methods (i.e., multicommodity network flows and network flows with side constraints) can model three-dimensional, hierarchical and linked tables. Exploiting this network structure can improve the performance of any solution method solely based on linear programming formulations.