Today many organizations face challenges when developing a realistic plan or schedule that provides the best possible balance between customer service and revenue goals. Optimization technology has long been used to find the best solutions to complex planning and scheduling problems. A decision-support environment that enables the flexible exploration of all the trade-offs and sensitivities needs to provide the following capabilities: Flexibility to develop and compare realistic planning and scheduling scenarios Quality sensitivity analysis and explanations Collaborative planning and scenario sharing Decision recommendations This IBM® Redbooks® publication introduces you to the IBM ILOG® Optimization Decision Manager (ODM) Enterprise. This decision-support application provides the capabilities you need to take full advantage of optimization technology. Applications built with IBM ILOG ODM Enterprise can help users create, compare, and understand planning or scheduling scenarios. They can also adjust any of the model inputs or goals, and fully understanding the binding constraints, trade-offs, sensitivities, and business options. This book enables business analysts, architects, and administrators to design and use their own operational decision management solution.

The book is a benefit for graduate and postgraduate students in the areas of operations research, decision theory, optimization theory, linear algebra, interval analysis and fuzzy sets. The book will also be useful for the researchers in the respective areas. The first part of the book deals with decision making problems and procedures that have been established to combine opinions about alternatives related to different points of view. Procedures based on pairwise comparisons are thoroughly investigated. In the second part we investigate optimization problems where objective functions and constraints are characterized by extremal operators such as maximum, minimum or various triangular norms (t-norms). Matrices in max-min algebra are useful in applications such as automata theory, design of switching circuits, logic of binary relations, medical diagnosis, Markov chains, social choice, models of organizations, information systems, political systems and clustering. The input data in real problems are usually not exact and can be characterized by interval values.

This first-rate text explores the theory and methodology of systems engineering in evaluating alternative courses of action and associated decision-making policies. It treats criteria as multidimensional, rather than scalar, in the development of normative theories. These contribute to a behavioral theory of decision making and provide guidance for exercising judgment. An introductory discussion of the systemic approach to judgment and decision is followed by explorations of psychological value measurements, utility, classical decision analysis, and vector optimization theory. The second section chiefly deals with methods of assessing and evaluating alternatives, including both noninteractive and interactive methods. A taxonomy and a comparative evaluation of methods conclude the text.

- Collection of results of multicriteria optimization, including nonlinear, linear and combinatorial optimization problems - Includes numerous illustrations, examples and problems

Advances and major investments in the field of neuroscience can enhance traditional behavioral science approaches to training, learning, and other applications of value to the Army. Neural-behavioral indicators offer new ways to evaluate how well an individual trainee has assimilated mission critical knowledge and skills, and can also be used to provide feedback on the readiness of soldiers for combat. Current methods for matching individual capabilities with the requirements for performing high-value Army assignments do not include neuropsychological, psychophysiological, neurochemical or neurogenetic components; simple neuropsychological testing could greatly improve training success rates for these assignments. Opportunities in Neuroscience for Future Army Applications makes 17 recommendations that focus on utilizing current scientific research and development initiatives to improve performance and efficiency, collaborating with pharmaceutical companies to employ neuropharmaceuticals for general sustainment or enhancement of soldier performance, and improving cognitive and behavioral performance using interdisciplinary approaches and technological investments. An essential guide for the Army, this book will also be of interest to other branches of military, national security and intelligence agencies, academic and commercial researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and others interested in applying the rapid advances in neuroscience to the performance of individual and group tasks.

This major new volume provides business decisionmakers and analysts with a tool that provides a logical structure for understanding problems as well as a mathematical technique for solving them. The primary tool presented throughout Optimization for Profit is linear programming (LP)--a medium that can be mastered by any individual who seeks to improve his/her analytical and decisionmaking skills. One of the special features of Optimization for Profit is the illustration of activity analysis as the technique used to formulate problems. By using activity analysis as the problem structure, linear programming become a natural extension of the way decision makers approach problems. As a result, linear programming becomes an integral part of the thinking process of the individual. Consequently, students or practitioners can readily create a linear programming model of an entire business or any part of a business. Several chapters are devoted to describing this technique and illustrating its application to many different types of companies, including an oil refinery, a marmalade production company, and a chicken processing plant. A thorough study of Optimization for Profit will enable you to work with any manufacturer or service industry and model all or part of the operation, and then solve the model to determine how best to minimize costs or maximize profits. Many firms save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year through the application of linear programming. The authors have presented the material in this vital book so clearly and thoroughly that an individual could master the material through self-study. The inclusion of problems at the end of each chapter makes this book suitable as a textbook at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level at most colleges or universities for students of management science, operations research personnel, and applied mathematicians working in industry, government, or academia. Notable features of the book include: the practical aspects of modeling a business or any part of a business using linear programming a unique approach to explain the simplex method for solving linear programming problems real life, practical problems that are presented and solved in detail detailed instructions for those interested in solving linear programming problems on all types of computers from mainframes to PCs numerous problems provided for the benefit of the student and all of the linear programming models described in these problems as well as in the text itself are available on a diskette

This book presents the multi-criteria approach to decision support, as well as the various multi-criteria tools to help avoid multi-objective optimization. The book is intended as a tool for understanding the multi-criteria tools for decision support and modeling in mathematical programming. It helps to structure models, to easily model complex constraints, to have a basic modeling guide for any multi-criteria system and to better understand models already existing in the literature. The book is structured in the same order as components of the methodology, established in a multi-criteria optimization problem. It introduces the elements of the actors, the decision-making activity under criteria, calculations, specifications and objective criterion.

This book presents the state-of-the-art, current challenges, and future perspectives for the field of many-criteria optimization and decision analysis. The field recognizes that real-life problems often involve trying to balance a multiplicity of considerations simultaneously – such as performance, cost, risk, sustainability, and quality. The field develops theory, methods and tools that can support decision makers in finding appropriate solutions when faced with many (typically more than three) such criteria at the same time. The book consists of two parts: key research topics, and emerging topics. Part I begins with a general introduction to many-criteria optimization, perspectives from research leaders in real-world problems, and a contemporary survey of the attributes of problems of this kind. This part continues with chapters on fundamental aspects of many-criteria optimization, namely on order relations, quality measures, benchmarking, visualization, and theoretical considerations. Part II offers more specialized chapters on correlated objectives, heterogeneous objectives, Bayesian optimization, and game theory. Written by leading experts across the field of many-criteria optimization, this book will be an essential resource for researchers in the fields of evolutionary computing, operations research, multiobjective optimization, and decision science.