In today's global economy, supply chains are an essential ingredient to corporate survival and growth. Operations strategy in supply chains must assume an ever-expanding and strategic role of risks that modern enterprises face when they operate in an interdependent supply chain environment. These operational and strategic facets entail a brand new set of operational problems and risks that have not always been understood or managed very well. It falls to supply chain managers to identify and to educate corporate managers on what these critical operational problems and risks involve. This...
In today's global economy, supply chains are an essential ingredient to corporate survival and growth. Operations strategy in supply chains must as...
DYNAMIC OPTIMIZATION AND DIFFERENTIAL GAMES has been written to address the increasing number of Operations Research and Management Science problems (that is, applications) that involve the explicit consideration of time and of gaming among multiple agents. It is a book that will be used both as a textbook and as a reference and guide to engineers, operation researchers, applied mathematicians and social scientists whose work involves the theoretical aspects of dynamic optimization and differential games. Included throughout the text are detailed explanations of several original dynamic...
DYNAMIC OPTIMIZATION AND DIFFERENTIAL GAMES has been written to address the increasing number of Operations Research and Management Science problem...
1. 1 Motivations Deciding is a very complex and difficult task. Some people even argue that our ability to make decisions in complex situations is the main feature that distinguishes us from animals (it is also common to say that laughing is the main difference). Nevertheless, when the task is too complex or the interests at stake are too important, it quite often happens that we do not know or we are not sure what to decide and, in many instances, we resort to a decision support technique: an informal one-we toss a coin, we ask an oracle, we visit an astrologer, we consult an expert, we...
1. 1 Motivations Deciding is a very complex and difficult task. Some people even argue that our ability to make decisions in complex situations is the...
Multiple criteria decision-making research has developed rapidly and has become a main area of research for dealing with complex decision problems which require the consideration of multiple objectives or criteria. Over the past twenty years, numerous multiple criterion decision methods have been developed which are able to solve such problems. However, the selection of an appropriate method to solve a particular decision problem is today's problem for a decision support researcher and decision-maker. Intelligent Strategies for Meta Multiple Criteria Decision-Making deals...
Multiple criteria decision-making research has developed rapidly and has become a main area of research for dealing with complex decision problems whi...
This work is a revision of the doctoral dissertation of Eduardo Mena pre sented to the Department of Computer Science and System Engineering at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) in November 1998 Mena 98]. The OBSERVER system was developed as a result of this Ph.D. thesis. This book is composed of eight chapters. In Chapter 1 we introduce our rationale for writing a book about systems that process queries in global information systems. Then in Chapter 2 we review the techno logical context for our work, including distributed and heterogeneous environments and the use of ontologies. We also...
This work is a revision of the doctoral dissertation of Eduardo Mena pre sented to the Department of Computer Science and System Engineering at the Un...
Constraint Programming is a problem-solving paradigm that establishes a clear distinction between two pivotal aspects of a problem: (1) a precise definition of the constraints that define the problem to be solved and (2) the algorithms and heuristics enabling the selection of decisions to solve the problem. It is because of these capabilities that Constraint Programming is increasingly being employed as a problem-solving tool to solve scheduling problems. Hence the development of Constraint-Based Scheduling as a field of study. The aim of this book is to provide an overview of the...
Constraint Programming is a problem-solving paradigm that establishes a clear distinction between two pivotal aspects of a problem: (1) a precise defi...
Eugene A. Feinberg Adam Shwartz This volume deals with the theory of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) and their applications. Each chapter was written by a leading expert in the re- spective area. The papers cover major research areas and methodologies, and discuss open questions and future research directions. The papers can be read independently, with the basic notation and concepts ofSection 1.2. Most chap- ters should be accessible by graduate or advanced undergraduate students in fields of operations research, electrical engineering, and computer science. 1.1 AN OVERVIEW OF MARKOV...
Eugene A. Feinberg Adam Shwartz This volume deals with the theory of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) and their applications. Each chapter was written...
Modeling Uncertainty: An Examination of Stochastic Theory, Methods, and Applications, is a volume undertaken by the friends and colleagues of Sid Yakowitz in his honor. Fifty internionally known scholars have collectively contributed 30 papers on modeling uncertainty to this volume. Each of these papers was carefully reviewed and in the majority of cases the original submission was revised before being accepted for publication in the book. The papers cover a great variety of topics in probability, statistics, economics, stochastic optimization, control theory, regression...
Modeling Uncertainty: An Examination of Stochastic Theory, Methods, and Applications, is a volume undertaken by the friends and colle...
Search Theory is one of the original disciplines within the field of Operations Research. It deals with the problem faced by a Searcher who wishes to minimize the time required to find a hidden object, or "target. " The Searcher chooses a path in the "search space" and finds the target when he is sufficiently close to it. Traditionally, the target is assumed to have no motives of its own regarding when it is found; it is simply stationary and hidden according to a known distribution (e. g., oil), or its motion is determined stochastically by known rules (e. g., a fox in a forest). The...
Search Theory is one of the original disciplines within the field of Operations Research. It deals with the problem faced by a Searcher who wishes to ...
Convexity of sets in linear spaces, and concavity and convexity of functions, lie at the root of beautiful theoretical results that are at the same time extremely useful in the analysis and solution of optimization problems, including problems of either single objective or multiple objectives. Not all of these results rely necessarily on convexity and concavity; some of the results can guarantee that each local optimum is also a global optimum, giving these methods broader application to a wider class of problems. Hence, the focus of the first part of the book is concerned with several types...
Convexity of sets in linear spaces, and concavity and convexity of functions, lie at the root of beautiful theoretical results that are at the same ti...