This volume contains a selection of papers referring to lectures presented at the symposium "Operations Research 2003" (OR03) held at the Ruprecht Karls-Universitiit Heidelberg, September 3 - 5, 2003. This international con ference took place under the auspices of the German Operations Research So ciety (GOR) and of Dr. Erwin Teufel, prime minister of Baden-Wurttemberg. The symposium had about 500 participants from countries all over the world. It attracted academians and practitioners working in various field of Opera tions Research and provided them with the most recent advances in Opera tions Research and related areas in Economics, Mathematics, and Computer Science. The program consisted of 4 plenary and 13 semi-plenary talks and more than 300 contributed papers selected by the program committee to be presented in 17 sections. Due to a limited number of pages available for the proceedings volume, the length of each article as well as the total number of accepted contributions had to be restricted. Submitted manuscripts have therefore been reviewed and 62 of them have been selected for publication. This refereeing procedure has been strongly supported by the section chairmen and we would like to express our gratitude to them. Finally, we also would like to thank Dr. Werner Muller from Springer-Verlag for his support in publishing this proceedings volume.

An insight into the latest results from the world of operations research - a wide-ranging field, as is shown by the book's 24 sections, corresponding to the conference program itself. Although problems of a primarily methodological nature are discussed, the emphasis is placed firmly on practical subjects, such as reports from the fields of healthcare, environmental protection, logistics and traffic engineering. This selection also clearly illustrates the extent to which OR is spreading into and already interwoven in other scientific disciplines.

The international conference \Operations Research 2008", the annual meeting of the German Operations Research Society (GOR), was held at the University of Augsburg on September 3-5, 2008. About 580 p- ticipants from more than 30 countries presented and listened to nearly 400 talks on a broad range of Operations Research. The general subject \Operations Research and Global Business" str- ses the important role of Operations Research in improving decisions in the increasingly complex business processes in a global environment. The plenary speakers Morris A. Cohen (Wharton School) and Bernd Liepert (Executive Board of KUKA Robotics) addressed this subject. Moreover, one of the founders of Operations Research, Saul Gass (U- versity of Maryland), gave the opening speech on the early history of Operations Research. This volume contains 93 papers presented at the conference, selected by the program committee and the section chairs, forming a representative sample of the various subjects dealt with at Operations Research 2008. The volume follows the structure of the conference, with 12 sections, grouped into six \Fields of Applications" and six \Fields of Methods and Theory". This structure in no way means a separation of theory and application, which would be detrimental in Operations Research, but displays the large spectrum of aspects in the focus of the papers. Of course, most papers present theory, methods and applications together.

These proceedings provide information on the most recent advances in operations research and related areas in economics, mathematics, and computer science, contributed by academics and practitioners from around the world.

​This book contains selected papers presented at the "International Annual Conference of the German Operations Research Society (OR2012)" which was held September 4 -7, 2012 at the Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany. The international conference, which also serves as the annual meeting of the German Operations Research Society (GOR), attracted more than 500 participants from more than 39 countries. Special attention at the conference was given to the three topics "Energy, Markets and Mobility". The OR2012 conference has addressed these topics from an OR perspective, treating them not only in isolation, but also with respect to their numerous and exciting interconnections, such as new energy for new mobility concepts and new market mechanisms for sustainable energy production to name but a few. The proceedings show that this conference topic is an important and promising area to apply Operations Research. The book also contains numerous papers addressing the full scope of fields in Operations Research.

This volume contains a selection of 128 papers presented in lectures during the international scientific symposium "Operations Research 2005" (OR 2005) held at the University of Bremen, September 7-9, 2005. This international conference took place under the auspices of the German Operations Research Society (GOR). The symposium had about 600 participants from countries all over the world. It attracted academics and practitioners working in various fields of Operations Research and provided them with the most recent advances in Operations Research as well as related areas in Economics, Mathematics, and Computer Science including the special interest streams Logistics and New Maritime Businesses. The program consisted of 3 plenary and 15 semi-plenary talks and about 400 contributed presentations selected by the program committee to be presented in 20 sections.