WeCon: An Efficient Weight-Conditioned Neural Solver for Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization Problems

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wu, Xuan, Chen, Jinbiao, Li, Yang, Wen, Lijie, Wu, Chunguo, Li, Yuanshu, Xiao, Yubin, Miao, Chunyan, Zhou, You, Wang, Di
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Wu, Xuan
Chen, Jinbiao
Li, Yang
Wen, Lijie
Wu, Chunguo
Li, Yuanshu
Xiao, Yubin
Miao, Chunyan
Zhou, You
Wang, Di
author_facet Wu, Xuan
Chen, Jinbiao
Li, Yang
Wen, Lijie
Wu, Chunguo
Li, Yuanshu
Xiao, Yubin
Miao, Chunyan
Zhou, You
Wang, Di
contents Existing neural solvers for Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization Problems (MOCOPs) commonly adopt decomposition-based strategies that scalarize an MOCOP into multiple subproblems associated with distinct weight vectors. However, they either inject weights only once during decoding, limiting weight-conditioned context modeling, or primarily during encoding, causing weight-signal dilution during decoding. Moreover, preference optimization methods rely on purely random sampling to construct solution pairs for training solvers, which often produces less informative pairs and thus leads to low training effectiveness. To better address these limitations, we propose an efficient Weight-Conditioned neural solver (WeCon). Specifically, we design an encoder layer with three attention blocks and our proposed Gated Residual Fusion (GRF) block to facilitate harmonious interaction between instance features and weights, thereby generating informative weight-conditioned context. We further introduce a plug-and-play Residual Fusion (RF) block in the decoder to alleviate weight-signal dilution. Finally, we propose Efficient Preference Optimization (EPO), which constructs high-quality solutions, thereby generating more informative pairs to improve training effectiveness. Experiments on four MOCOP variants across different problem scales and distribution patterns demonstrate that WeCon achieves HyperVolume (HV) values comparable to SOTA solver POCCO-W, while reducing inference time by 40%. Ablation studies validate the contributions of all designs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_22876
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle WeCon: An Efficient Weight-Conditioned Neural Solver for Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization Problems
Wu, Xuan
Chen, Jinbiao
Li, Yang
Wen, Lijie
Wu, Chunguo
Li, Yuanshu
Xiao, Yubin
Miao, Chunyan
Zhou, You
Wang, Di
Machine Learning
Existing neural solvers for Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization Problems (MOCOPs) commonly adopt decomposition-based strategies that scalarize an MOCOP into multiple subproblems associated with distinct weight vectors. However, they either inject weights only once during decoding, limiting weight-conditioned context modeling, or primarily during encoding, causing weight-signal dilution during decoding. Moreover, preference optimization methods rely on purely random sampling to construct solution pairs for training solvers, which often produces less informative pairs and thus leads to low training effectiveness. To better address these limitations, we propose an efficient Weight-Conditioned neural solver (WeCon). Specifically, we design an encoder layer with three attention blocks and our proposed Gated Residual Fusion (GRF) block to facilitate harmonious interaction between instance features and weights, thereby generating informative weight-conditioned context. We further introduce a plug-and-play Residual Fusion (RF) block in the decoder to alleviate weight-signal dilution. Finally, we propose Efficient Preference Optimization (EPO), which constructs high-quality solutions, thereby generating more informative pairs to improve training effectiveness. Experiments on four MOCOP variants across different problem scales and distribution patterns demonstrate that WeCon achieves HyperVolume (HV) values comparable to SOTA solver POCCO-W, while reducing inference time by 40%. Ablation studies validate the contributions of all designs.
title WeCon: An Efficient Weight-Conditioned Neural Solver for Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization Problems
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.22876