Industrial Applications of Combinatorial Optimization

Industries rely more and more on advanced technology. Accelerated computer evolution makes large-scale computation practical. Many enterprises are be- ginning to benefit from more efficient allocation of resources and more effective planning, scheduling, manufacturing, and distribution by adopting state-of-the- art decision support systems. Academics increasingly emphasize application- driven research. All these forces have moved optimization from a pure class- room and textbook terminology to an accepted tool in today's business world. This book chronicles and describes applications of combinatorial optimization in industry. A wide range of applications is included: manpower planning * production planning * job sequencing and scheduling * manufacturing layout design * facility planning * vehicle scheduling and routing * retail seasonal planning * I! space shuttle scheduling, and telecommunication network design . * The applications covered in this book comprise a representative set of industry sectors including electronics, airlines, manufacturing, tobacco, retail, telecom- munication, defense, and livestock. These examples should encourage opera- tions researchers and applied mathematicians by pointing out how the impor- tance and practicality of optimization is starting to be realized by the manage- ment of various organizations and how some pioneering developments in this field are beginning to bear fruit.