Column Generation is an insightful overview of the state of the art in integer programming column generation and its many applications. The volume begins with "A Primer in Column Generation" which outlines the theory and ideas necessary to solve large-scale practical problems, illustrated with a variety of examples. Other chapters follow this introduction on "Shortest Path Problems with Resource Constraints," "Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window," "Branch-and-Price Heuristics," "Cutting Stock Problems," each dealing with methodological aspects of the field. Three chapters deal with transportation applications: "Large-scale Models in the Airline Industry," "Robust Inventory Ship Routing by Column Generation," and "Ship Scheduling with Recurring Visits and Visit Separation Requirements." Production is the focus of another three chapters: "Combining Column Generation and Lagrangian Relaxation," "Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition for Job Shop Scheduling," and "Applying Column Generation to Machine Scheduling." The final chapter by François Vanderbeck, "Implementing Mixed Integer Column Generation," reviews how to set-up the Dantzig-Wolfe reformulation, adapt standard MIP techniques to the column generation context (branching, preprocessing, primal heuristics), and deal with specific column generation issues (initialization, stabilization, column management strategies).

Column Generation is an insightful overview of the state of the art in integer programming column generation and its many applications. The volume begins with "A Primer in Column Generation" which outlines the theory and ideas necessary to solve large-scale practical problems, illustrated with a variety of examples. Other chapters follow this introduction on "Shortest Path Problems with Resource Constraints," "Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window," "Branch-and-Price Heuristics," "Cutting Stock Problems," each dealing with methodological aspects of the field. Three chapters deal with transportation applications: "Large-scale Models in the Airline Industry," "Robust Inventory Ship Routing by Column Generation," and "Ship Scheduling with Recurring Visits and Visit Separation Requirements." Production is the focus of another three chapters: "Combining Column Generation and Lagrangian Relaxation," "Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition for Job Shop Scheduling," and "Applying Column Generation to Machine Scheduling." The final chapter by François Vanderbeck, "Implementing Mixed Integer Column Generation," reviews how to set-up the Dantzig-Wolfe reformulation, adapt standard MIP techniques to the column generation context (branching, preprocessing, primal heuristics), and deal with specific column generation issues (initialization, stabilization, column management strategies).

Column Generation is an insightful overview of the state of the art in integer programming column generation and its many applications. The volume begins with "A Primer in Column Generation" which outlines the theory and ideas necessary to solve large-scale practical problems, illustrated with a variety of examples. Other chapters follow this introduction on "Shortest Path Problems with Resource Constraints," "Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window," "Branch-and-Price Heuristics," "Cutting Stock Problems," each dealing with methodological aspects of the field. Three chapters deal with transportation applications: "Large-scale Models in the Airline Industry," "Robust Inventory Ship Routing by Column Generation," and "Ship Scheduling with Recurring Visits and Visit Separation Requirements." Production is the focus of another three chapters: "Combining Column Generation and Lagrangian Relaxation," "Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition for Job Shop Scheduling," and "Applying Column Generation to Machine Scheduling." The final chapter by François Vanderbeck, "Implementing Mixed Integer Column Generation," reviews how to set-up the Dantzig-Wolfe reformulation, adapt standard MIP techniques to the column generation context (branching, preprocessing, primal heuristics), and deal with specific column generation issues (initialization, stabilization, column management strategies).

The goal of the Encyclopedia of Optimization is to introduce the reader to a complete set of topics that show the spectrum of research, the richness of ideas, and the breadth of applications that has come from this field. The second edition builds on the success of the former edition with more than 150 completely new entries, designed to ensure that the reference addresses recent areas where optimization theories and techniques have advanced. Particularly heavy attention resulted in health science and transportation, with entries such as "Algorithms for Genomics", "Optimization and Radiotherapy Treatment Design", and "Crew Scheduling".

Finding exact solutions to many combinatorial optimization problems in busi ness, engineering, and science still poses a real challenge, despite the impact of recent advances in mathematical programming and computer technology. New fields of applications, such as computational biology, electronic commerce, and supply chain management, bring new challenges and needs for algorithms and optimization techniques. Metaheuristics are master procedures that guide and modify the operations of subordinate heuristics, to produce improved approx imate solutions to hard optimization problems with respect to more simple algorithms. They also provide fast and robust tools, producing high-quality solutions in reasonable computation times. The field of metaheuristics has been fast evolving in recent years. Tech niques such as simulated annealing, tabu search, genetic algorithms, scatter search, greedy randomized adaptive search, variable neighborhood search, ant systems, and their hybrids are currently among the most efficient and robust optimization strategies to find high-quality solutions to many real-life optimiza tion problems. A very large nmnber of successful applications of metaheuristics are reported in the literature and spread throughout many books, journals, and conference proceedings. A series of international conferences entirely devoted to the theory, applications, and computational developments in metaheuristics has been attracting an increasing number of participants, from universities and the industry.

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO OPTIMIZATION PROBLEMS WITH DISCRETE OR INTEGER VARIABLES, REVISED AND UPDATED The revised second edition of Integer Programming explains in clear and simple terms how to construct custom-made algorithms or use existing commercial software to obtain optimal or near-optimal solutions for a variety of real-world problems. The second edition also includes information on the remarkable progress in the development of mixed integer programming solvers in the 22 years since the first edition of the book appeared. The updated text includes information on the most recent developments in the field such as the much improved preprocessing/presolving and the many new ideas for primal heuristics included in the solvers. The result has been a speed-up of several orders of magnitude. The other major change reflected in the text is the widespread use of decomposition algorithms, in particular column generation (branch-(cut)-and-price) and Benders’ decomposition. The revised second edition: Contains new developments on column generation Offers a new chapter on Benders’ algorithm Includes expanded information on preprocessing, heuristics, and branch-and-cut Presents several basic and extended formulations, for example for fixed cost network flows Also touches on and briefly introduces topics such as non-bipartite matching, the complexity of extended formulations or a good linear program for the implementation of lift-and-project Written for students of integer/mathematical programming in operations research, mathematics, engineering, or computer science, Integer Programming offers an updated edition of the basic text that reflects the most recent developments in the field.

Column Generation is an insightful overview of the state of the art in integer programming column generation and its many applications. The volume begins with "A Primer in Column Generation" which outlines the theory and ideas necessary to solve large-scale practical problems, illustrated with a variety of examples. Other chapters follow this introduction on "Shortest Path Problems with Resource Constraints," "Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window," "Branch-and-Price Heuristics," "Cutting Stock Problems," each dealing with methodological aspects of the field. Three chapters deal with transportation applications: "Large-scale Models in the Airline Industry," "Robust Inventory Ship Routing by Column Generation," and "Ship Scheduling with Recurring Visits and Visit Separation Requirements." Production is the focus of another three chapters: "Combining Column Generation and Lagrangian Relaxation," "Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition for Job Shop Scheduling," and "Applying Column Generation to Machine Scheduling." The final chapter by François Vanderbeck, "Implementing Mixed Integer Column Generation," reviews how to set-up the Dantzig-Wolfe reformulation, adapt standard MIP techniques to the column generation context (branching, preprocessing, primal heuristics), and deal with specific column generation issues (initialization, stabilization, column management strategies).

This volume contains the proceedings of the First International Conference on IntegrationofAIandORTechniquesinConstraintProgrammingforCombina- rialOptimisation Problems.This new conferencefollows the seriesof CP-AI-OR International Workshops on Integration of AI and OR Techniques in Constraint Programming for Combinatorial Optimisation Problems held in Ferrara (1999), Paderborn (2000), Ashford (2001), Le Croisic (2002), and Montreal (2003). The success of the previous workshops has demonstrated that CP-AI-OR is bec- ing a major forum for exchanging ideas and methodologiesfrom both ?elds. The aim of this new conference is to bring together researchersfrom AI and OR, and to give them the opportunity to show how the integration of techniques from AI and OR can lead to interesting results on large scale and complex problems. The integration of techniques from Arti?cial Intelligence and Operations - search has provided e?ective algorithms for tackling complex and large scale combinatorial problems with signi?cant improvements in terms of e?ciency, scalability and optimality. The bene?t of this integration has been shown in applications such as hoist scheduling, rostering, dynamic scheduling and vehicle routing. At the programming and modelling levels, most constraint languages embed OR techniques to reason about collections of constraints, so-calledglobal constraints. Some languages also provide support for hybridization allowing the programmer to build new integrated algorithms. The resulting multi-paradigm programmingframeworkcombines the ?exibility and modelling facilities of C- straint Programming with the special purpose and e?cient methods from - erations Research

Recent developments in theory, algorithms, and applications in optimization and control are discussed in this proceedings, based on selected talks from the ‘Optimization Control and Applications in the Information Age’ conference, organized in honor of Panos Pardalos’s 60th birthday. This volume contains numerous applications to optimal decision making in energy production and fuel management, data mining, logistics, supply chain management, market network analysis, risk analysis, and community network analysis. In addition, a short biography is included describing Dr. Pardalos’s path from a shepherd village on the high mountains of Thessaly to academic success. Due to the wide range of topics such as global optimization, combinatorial optimization, game theory, stochastics and programming contained in this publication, scientists, researchers, and students in optimization, operations research, analytics, mathematics and computer science will be interested in this volume.