The idea of this book came to us in October 2002 at the international conference Production systems design, supply chain management and logistics (Miedzyzdroje, Poland). This conference was organized by an initiative group from certain French and Polish Universities with the objective to find a new synergy and to develop a Pan European (West East) cooperation in the areas of: Design of production systems Supply and inventory management Production planning and scheduling Facility location, transportation and logistics Supply chain optimisation via simulation The conference was focused on a...