A modified goal programming model for piecewise linear functions

Piecewise linear function (PLF) is an important technique for solving polynomial and/or posynomial programming problems since the problems can be approximately represented by the PLF. The PLF can also be solved using the goal programming (GP) technique by adding appropriate linearization constraints. This paper proposes a modified GP technique to solve PLF with n terms. The proposed method requires only one additional constraint, which is more efficient than some well-known methods such as those proposed by Charnes and Cooper, and Li. Furthermore, the proposed model can easily be applied to general polynomial and/or posynomial programming problems.