Preface. 1. Moving Toward an Integrated Decision Support System for Manpower Planning at Continental Airlines: Optimization of Pilot Training Assignments; Gang Yu, et al. 2. Shortcomings of MRP II and a New Planning Meta-Method; A. Kimms, A. Drexl. 3. The Development, Implementation and Use of a Package to Facilitate Planning and Production Scheduling in a Tobacco Processing Plant; M.G. Nicholls. 4. Stability Radius of an Optimal Schedule: A Survey and Recent Developments; Y.N. Sotskov, et al. 5. Scheduling Jobs with Sequence Dependent Setups on Coupled Lines; E.C. Sewell, J.C. Tan. 6. Optimizing the Radial Component Insertion Operations on PCBs; S.Y. Chang, et al. 7. Combinatorial Optimization in a Cattle Yard: Feed Distribution, Vehicle Scheduling, Lot Sizing, and Dynamic Pen Assignment; M. Dror, J.M.Y. Leung. 8. Optimizing a Retail Promotional Calendar by Mixed Integer, Linear Programming; S.A. Smith. 9. An Implementation of a System Using Heuristics to Support Decisions About Shop Floor Setup Changes; R. Dé. 10. Integrative Population Analysis for Better Solutions to Large-Scale Mathematical Programs; F. Glover, et al. 11. Lagrangian Relaxation for Flow Shop Scheduling; G.G. Polak. 12. A Heuristic for Vehicle Routing and Manpower Planning; G.A. Bohoris, J.M. Thomas. 13. Conceptual Design and Analysis of Rail Car Unloading Area; J.F. Bard. 14. A Study of the Space Shuttle Scheduling Problem; S.A. Brah, J.L. Hunsucker. 15. Models and Implementation Techniques for Local Access Telecommunication Network Design; Geon Cho, D.X. Shaw.Appendix A: Pseudo-Code of Algorithm 2.

Industries rely more and more on advanced technology. Accelerated computer evolution makes large-scale computation practical. Many enterprises are be­ ginning to benefit from more efficient allocation of resources and more effective planning, scheduling, manufacturing, and distribution by adopting state-of-the­ art decision support systems. Academics increasingly emphasize application­ driven research. All these forces have moved optimization from a pure class­ room and textbook terminology to an accepted tool in today's business world. This book chronicles and describes applications of combinatorial optimization in industry. A wide range of applications is included: manpower planning . production planning . job sequencing and scheduling . manufacturing layout design . facility planning . vehicle scheduling and routing . retail seasonal planning . I! space shuttle scheduling, and telecommunication network design . . The applications covered in this book comprise a representative set of industry sectors including electronics, airlines, manufacturing, tobacco, retail, telecom­ munication, defense, and livestock. These examples should encourage opera­ tions researchers and applied mathematicians by pointing out how the impor­ tance and practicality of optimization is starting to be realized by the manage­ ment of various organizations and how some pioneering developments in this field are beginning to bear fruit.