Supply Chain Optimization captures the latest results in a segment of current research activity in supply chain management. This research area focuses on applying optimization techniques to supply chain management problems. The research papers that make up the volume provide a snapshot of state-of-the-art optimization methods within the field. This book presents rigorous modelling approaches for supply chain operations problems with a goal of improving supply chain performance (or the performance of some segment thereof). It contains high-quality works from leading researchers in the field whose expertise fits within this scope. The book provides a diverse blend of research topics and novel modelling and solution approaches for difficult classes of supply chain operations, planning, and design problems.

This book reflects a significant part of authors' research activity dur ing the last ten years. The present monograph is constructed on the results obtained by the authors through their direct cooperation or due to the authors separately or in cooperation with other mathematicians. All these results fit in a unitary scheme giving the structure of this work. The book is mainly addressed to researchers and scholars in Pure and Applied Mathematics, Mechanics, Physics and Engineering. We are greatly indebted to Viorica Venera Motreanu for the careful reading of the manuscript and helpful comments on important issues. We are also grateful to our Editors of Kluwer Academic Publishers for their professional assistance. Our deepest thanks go to our numerous scientific collaborators and friends, whose work was so important for us. D. Motreanu and V. Radulescu IX Introduction The present monograph is based on original results obtained by the authors in the last decade. This book provides a comprehensive expo sition of some modern topics in nonlinear analysis with applications to the study of several classes of boundary value problems. Our framework includes multivalued elliptic problems with discontinuities, variational inequalities, hemivariational inequalities and evolution problems. The treatment relies on variational methods, monotonicity principles, topo logical arguments and optimization techniques. Excepting Sections 1 and 3 in Chapter 1 and Sections 1 and 3 in Chapter 2, the material is new in comparison with any other book, representing research topics where the authors contributed. The outline of our work is the following."

Decomposition methods aim to reduce large-scale problems to simpler problems. This monograph presents selected aspects of the dimension-reduction problem. Exact and approximate aggregations of multidimensional systems are developed and from a known model of input-output balance, aggregation methods are categorized. The issues of loss of accuracy, recovery of original variables (disaggregation), and compatibility conditions are analyzed in detail. The method of iterative aggregation in large-scale problems is studied. For fixed weights, successively simpler aggregated problems are solved and the convergence of their solution to that of the original problem is analyzed. An introduction to block integer programming is considered. Duality theory, which is widely used in continuous block programming, does not work for the integer problem. A survey of alternative methods is presented and special attention is given to combined methods of decomposition. Block problems in which the coupling variables do not enter the binding constraints are studied. These models are worthwhile because they permit a decomposition with respect to primal and dual variables by two-level algorithms instead of three-level algorithms. Audience: This book is addressed to specialists in operations research, optimization, and optimal control.

Nonlinear Assignment Problems (NAPs) are natural extensions of the classic Linear Assignment Problem, and despite the efforts of many researchers over the past three decades, they still remain some of the hardest combinatorial optimization problems to solve exactly. The purpose of this book is to provide in a single volume, major algorithmic aspects and applications of NAPs as contributed by leading international experts. The chapters included in this book are concerned with major applications and the latest algorithmic solution approaches for NAPs. Approximation algorithms, polyhedral methods, semidefinite programming approaches and heuristic procedures for NAPs are included, while applications of this problem class in the areas of multiple-target tracking in the context of military surveillance systems, of experimental high energy physics, and of parallel processing are presented. Audience: Researchers and graduate students in the areas of combinatorial optimization, mathematical programming, operations research, physics, and computer science.

Metaheuristics: Progress as Real Problem Solvers is a peer-reviewed volume of eighteen current, cutting-edge papers by leading researchers in the field. Included are an invited paper by F. Glover and G. Kochenberger, which discusses the concept of Metaheuristic agent processes, and a tutorial paper by M.G.C. Resende and C.C. Ribeiro discussing GRASP with path-relinking. Other papers discuss problem-solving approaches to timetabling, automated planograms, elevators, space allocation, shift design, cutting stock, flexible shop scheduling, colorectal cancer and cartography. A final group of methodology papers clarify various aspects of Metaheuristics from the computational view point.

Though the volume covers 22 papers by 36 authors from 12 countries, the history in the background is bound to Hungary where, in 1973 Andras Pn kopa started to lay the foundation of a scientific forum, which can be a regular meeting spot for experts of the world in the field. Since then, there has been a constant interest in that forum. Headed at present by Tamas Rapcsak, the Laboratory of Operations Research and Decisions Systems of the Computer and Automation Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences followed the tradition in every respect, namely conferences were organized almost in every second year and in the same stimulating area, in the Matra mountains. The basic fields were kept, providing opportunities for the leading personalities to give voice to their latest results. The floor has been widened recently for the young generation, ensuring this way both a real location for the past, present and future experts to meet and also the possibility for them to make the multicoloured rainbow of the fields unbroken and continuous. The volume is devoted to the memory of Steven Vajda, one of the pioneers on mathematical programming, born is Hungary. In 1992 he took part in the XIth International Conference on Mathematical Programming at Matrafiired where, with his bright personality, he greatly contributed to the good spirituality of the event. We thank Jakob Krarup for his reminiscence on the life and scientific activities of late Steven Vajda."

The aim of this volume is to show how Fuzzy Sets and Systems can help to provide robust and adaptive heuristic optimization algorithms in a variety of situations. The book presents the state of the art and gives a broad overview on the real practical applications that Fuzzy Sets, based on heuristic algorithms, have.

This volume contains, in part, a selection of papers presented at the sixth Australian Optimization Day Miniconference (Ballarat, 16 July 1999), and the Special Sessions on Nonlinear Dynamics and Optimization and Operations Re search - Methods and Applications, which were held in Melbourne, July 11-15 1999 as a part of the Joint Meeting of the American Mathematical Society and Australian Mathematical Society. The editors have strived to present both con tributed papers and survey style papers as a more interesting mix for readers. Some participants from the meetings mentioned above have responded to this approach by preparing survey and 'semi-survey' papers, based on presented lectures. Contributed paper, which contain new and interesting results, are also included. The fields of the presented papers are very large as demonstrated by the following selection of key words from selected papers in this volume: * optimal control, stochastic optimal control, MATLAB, economic models, implicit constraints, Bellman principle, Markov process, decision-making under uncertainty, risk aversion, dynamic programming, optimal value function. * emergent computation, complexity, traveling salesman problem, signal estimation, neural networks, time congestion, teletraffic. * gap functions, nonsmooth variational inequalities, derivative-free algo rithm, Newton's method. * auxiliary function, generalized penalty function, modified Lagrange func tion. * convexity, quasiconvexity, abstract convexity.

This extremely useful book is devoted to the study of scalar and asymptotic scalar derivatives and their applications to some problems in nonlinear analysis, Riemannian geometry and applied mathematics. The theoretical results are developed in particular with respect to the study of complementarity problems, monotonicity of nonlinear mappings and the non-gradient type monotonicity on Riemannian manifolds. The text is intended for researchers and graduate students working in the fields of nonlinear analysis, Riemannian geometry and applied mathematics.

This book contains problems of stochastic optimization and identification. Results concerning uniform law of large numbers, convergence of approximate estimates of extreme points, as well as empirical estimates of functionals with probability 1 and in probability are presented.

Audience: Specialists in stochastic optimization and estimations, postgraduate students, and graduate students studying such topics

On August 1997 a conference titled "From Local to Global Optimiza- tion" was held at Storgarden in Rimfor.sa near the Linkoping Institute of Technology, Sweden. The conference gave us the opportunity to cel- ebrate Hoang Thy's achievements in Optimization during his 70 years of life. This book consists of a collection of research papers based on results presented during the conference and are dedicated to Professor Hoang Thy on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The papers cover a wide range of recent results in Mathematical Pro- gramming. The work of Hoang Thy, in particular in Global Optimiza- tion, has provided directions for new algorithmic developments in the field. We are indebted to the Kluwer Academic Publishers for inviting us to publish this volume, and the Center for Industrial Information Transfer (CENIIT) for financial support. We wish to thank the referees for their help and the authors for their papers. We also wish to join all contributors of this book in expressing birthday wishes and gratitude to Hoang Thy for his inspiration, support, and friendship to all of us. Athanasios Migdalas, Panos M. Pardalos, and Peter Varbrand November 1998 xv Hoang Tuy: An Appreciation Its a pleasure for me as colleague and friend to take this opportunity to celebrate Hoang 'I\lY'S numerous contributions to the field of mathemat- ical programming.

In February 2002, the Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) De partment at the University of Florida hosted a National Science Founda tion Workshop on Collaboration and Negotiation in Supply Chain Man agement and E Commerce. This workshop focused on characterizing the challenges facing leading edge firms in supply chain management and electronic commerce, and identifying research opportunities for de veloping new technological and decision support capabilities sought by industry. The audience included practitioners in the areas of supply chain management and E Commerce, as well as academic researchers working in these areas. The workshop provided a unique setting that has facilitated ongoing dialog between academic researchers and industry practitioners. This book codifies many of the important themes and issues around which the workshop discussions centered. The editors of this book, all faculty members in the ISE Department at the University of Florida, also served as the workshop's coordinators. In addition to workshop participants, we also invited contributions from leading academics and practitioners who were not able to attend. As a result, the chapters herein represent a collection of research contributions, monographs, and case studies from a variety of disciplines and viewpoints. On the aca demic side alone, chapter authors include faculty members in supply chain and operations management, marketing, industrial engineering, economics, computer science, civil and environmental engineering, and building construction departments.

This textbook examines a broad range of problems in science and engineering, describing key numerical methods applied to real life. The case studies presented are in such areas as data fitting, vehicle route planning and optimal control, scheduling and resource allocation, sensitivity calculations and worst-case analysis.

Chapters are self-contained with exercises provided at the end of most sections. Nonlinear Optimization with Engineering Applications is ideal for self-study and classroom use in engineering courses at the senior undergraduate or graduate level. The book will also appeal to postdocs and advanced researchers interested in the development and use of optimization algorithms.

In recent years global optimization has found applications in many interesting areas of science and technology including molecular biology, chemical equilibrium problems, medical imaging and networks. The collection of papers in this book indicates the diverse applicability of global optimization. Furthermore, various algorithmic, theoretical developments and computational studies are presented. Audience: All researchers and students working in mathematical programming.

Operations research and mathematical programming would not be as advanced today without the many advances in interior point methods during the last decade. These methods can now solve very efficiently and robustly large scale linear, nonlinear and combinatorial optimization problems that arise in various practical applications. The main ideas underlying interior point methods have influenced virtually all areas of mathematical programming including: analyzing and solving linear and nonlinear programming problems, sensitivity analysis, complexity analysis, the analysis of Newton's method, decomposition methods, polynomial approximation for combinatorial problems etc. This book covers the implications of interior techniques for the entire field of mathematical programming, bringing together many results in a uniform and coherent way. For the topics mentioned above the book provides theoretical as well as computational results, explains the intuition behind the main ideas, gives examples as well as proofs, and contains an extensive up-to-date bibliography. Audience: The book is intended for students, researchers and practitioners with a background in operations research, mathematics, mathematical programming, or statistics.

The first chapter deals with idempotent analysis per se . To make the pres- tation self-contained, in the first two sections we define idempotent semirings, give a concise exposition of idempotent linear algebra, and survey some of its applications. Idempotent linear algebra studies the properties of the semirn- ules An , n E N , over a semiring A with idempotent addition; in other words, it studies systems of equations that are linear in an idempotent semiring. Pr- ably the first interesting and nontrivial idempotent semiring , namely, that of all languages over a finite alphabet, as well as linear equations in this sern- ing, was examined by S. Kleene [107] in 1956 . This noncommutative semiring was used in applications to compiling and parsing (see also [1]) . Presently, the literature on idempotent algebra and its applications to theoretical computer science (linguistic problems, finite automata, discrete event systems, and Petri nets), biomathematics, logic , mathematical physics , mathematical economics, and optimizat ion, is immense; e. g. , see [9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 , 17, 22, 31 , 32, 35,36,37,38,39 ,40,41,52,53 ,54,55,61,62 ,63,64,68, 71, 72, 73,74,77,78, 79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,88,114,125 ,128,135,136, 138,139,141,159,160, 167,170,173,174,175,176,177,178,179,180,185,186 , 187, 188, 189]. In 1. 2 we present the most important facts of the idempotent algebra formalism . The semimodules An are idempotent analogs of the finite-dimensional v- n, tor spaces lR and hence endomorphisms of these semi modules can naturally be called (idempotent) linear operators on An .

In January 1992, the Sixth Workshop on Optimization and Numerical Analysis was held in the heart of the Mixteco-Zapoteca region, in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico, a beautiful and culturally rich site in ancient, colonial and modern Mexican civiliza tion. The Workshop was organized by the Numerical Analysis Department at the Institute of Research in Applied Mathematics of the National University of Mexico in collaboration with the Mathematical Sciences Department at Rice University, as were the previous ones in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1984 and 1989. As were the third, fourth, and fifth workshops, this one was supported by a grant from the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology, and the US National Science Foundation, as part of the joint Scientific and Technical Cooperation Program existing between these two countries. The participation of many of the leading figures in the field resulted in a good representation of the state of the art in Continuous Optimization, and in an over view of several topics including Numerical Methods for Diffusion-Advection PDE problems as well as some Numerical Linear Algebraic Methods to solve related pro blems. This book collects some of the papers given at this Workshop."

This book is devoted to one of the main questions of the theory of extremal prob lems, namely, to necessary and sufficient extremality conditions. It is intended mostly for mathematicians and also for all those who are interested in optimiza tion problems. The book may be useful for advanced students, post-graduated students, and researchers. The book consists of four chapters. In Chap. 1 we study the abstract minimization problem with constraints, which is often called the mathemati cal programming problem. Chapter 2 is devoted to one of the most important classes of extremal problems, the optimal control problem. In the third chapter we study one of the main objects of the calculus of variations, the integral quadratic form. In the concluding, fourth, chapter we study local properties of smooth nonlinear mappings in a neighborhood of an abnormal point. The problems which are studied in this book (of course, in addition to their extremal nature) are united by our main interest being in the study of the so called abnormal or degenerate problems. This is the main distinction of the present book from a large number of books devoted to theory of extremal problems, among which there are many excellent textbooks, and books such as, e.g., 13, 38, 59, 78, 82, 86, 101, 112, 119], to mention a few."

The purpose of this book is to acquaint the reader with the developments in bilinear systems theory and its applications. Bilinear systems can be used to represent a wide range of physical, chemical, biological, and social systems, as well as manufacturing processes, which cannot be effectively modeled under the assumption of linearity. This book provides a unified approach for the identification and control of nonlinear complex objects that can be transformed into bilinear systems, with a focus on the control of open physical processes functioning in a non-equilibrium mode.

The material is intended for graduate students, researchers, and specialists engaged in the fields of quantum and molecular computing, control of physical processes, biophysics, superconducting magnetism, physical information science, mathematics, and engineering.

Pairs of compact convex sets arise in the quasidifferential calculus of V.F. Demyanov and A.M. Rubinov as sub- and superdifferentials of quasidifferen- tiable functions (see [26]) and in the formulas for the numerical evaluation of the Aumann-Integral which were recently introduced in a series of papers by R. Baier and F. Lempio (see [4], [5], [10] and [9]) and R. Baier and E.M. Farkhi [6], [7], [8]. In the field of combinatorial convexity G. Ewald et al. [36] used an interesting construction called virtual polytope, which can also be represented as a pair of polytopes for the calculation of the combinatorial Picard group of a fan. Since in all mentioned cases the pairs of compact con- vex sets are not uniquely determined, minimal representations are of special to the existence of minimal pairs of compact importance. A problem related convex sets is the existence of reduced pairs of convex bodies, which has been studied by Chr. Bauer (see [14]).

A path player game is a new innovative type of game which considers network flow problems from the viewpoint of network owners. This strategy enables modeling real-world problems and has many practical applications.

Key features:

* Presents a rigorous exposition of the theoretical foundations of the concept of a path player game;

* Suggests 18 practical open problems for future research in such areas as traffic planning, computation of equilibria, and optimization;

* Examines potentials for games on polyhedra as well as integer versions of generalized Nash equilibria.

Written clearly, with well-presented mathematics, this book is intended for graduate students, mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists.

This work grew out of several years of research, graduate seminars and talks on the subject. It was motivated by a desire to make the technology accessible to those who most needed it or could most use it. It is meant to be a self-contained introduction, a reference for the techniques, and a guide to the literature for the underlying theory. It contains pointers to fertile areas for future research. It also serves as introductory documentation for a Fortran 90 software package for nonlinear systems and global optimization. The subject of the monograph is deterministic, automatically verified or r- orous methods. In such methods, directed rounding and computational fix- point theory are combined with exhaustive search (branch and bound) te- niques. Completion of such an algorithm with a list of solutions constitutes a rigorous mathematical proof that all of the solutions within the original search region are within the output list. The monograph is appropriate as an introduction to research and technology in the area, as a desk reference, or as a graduate-level course reference. Kno- edge of calculus, linear algebra, and elementary numerical analysis is assumed.

This volume presents state-of-the-art complementarity applications, algorithms, extensions and theory in the form of eighteen papers. These at the International Conference on Com invited papers were presented plementarity 99 (ICCP99) held in Madison, Wisconsin during June 9-12, 1999 with support from the National Science Foundation under Grant DMS-9970102. Complementarity is becoming more widely used in a variety of appli cation areas. In this volume, there are papers studying the impact of complementarity in such diverse fields as deregulation of electricity mar kets, engineering mechanics, optimal control and asset pricing. Further more, application of complementarity and optimization ideas to related problems in the burgeoning fields of machine learning and data mining are also covered in a series of three articles. In order to effectively process the complementarity problems that arise in such applications, various algorithmic, theoretical and computational extensions are covered in this volume. Nonsmooth analysis has an im portant role to play in this area as can be seen from articles using these tools to develop Newton and path following methods for constrained nonlinear systems and complementarity problems. Convergence issues are covered in the context of active set methods, global algorithms for pseudomonotone variational inequalities, successive convex relaxation and proximal point algorithms. Theoretical contributions to the connectedness of solution sets and constraint qualifications in the growing area of mathematical programs with equilibrium constraints are also presented. A relaxation approach is given for solving such problems. Finally, computational issues related to preprocessing mixed complementarity problems are addressed."

In the paper we propose a model of tax incentives optimization for inve- ment projects with a help of the mechanism of accelerated depreciation. Unlike the tax holidays which influence on effective income tax rate, accelerated - preciation affects on taxable income. In modern economic practice the state actively use for an attraction of - vestment into the creation of new enterprises such mechanisms as accelerated depreciation and tax holidays. The problem under our consideration is the following. Assume that the state (region) is interested in realization of a certain investment project, for ex- ple, the creation of a new enterprise. In order to attract a potential investor the state decides to use a mechanism of accelerated tax depreciation. The foll- ing question arise. What is a reasonable principle for choosing depreciation rate? From the state's point of view the future investor's behavior will be rat- nal. It means that while looking at economic environment the investor choose such a moment for investment which maximizes his expected net present value (NPV) from the given project. For this case both criteria and "investment rule" depend on proposed (by the state) depreciation policy. For the simplicity we will suppose that the purpose of the state for a given project is a maximi- tion of a discounted tax payments into the budget from the enterprise after its creation. Of course, these payments depend on the moment of investor's entry and, therefore, on the depreciation policy established by the state.

The concept of "reformulation" has long been playing an important role in mathematical programming. A classical example is the penalization technique in constrained optimization that transforms the constraints into the objective function via a penalty function thereby reformulating a constrained problem as an equivalent or approximately equivalent unconstrained problem. More recent trends consist of the reformulation of various mathematical programming prob lems, including variational inequalities and complementarity problems, into equivalent systems of possibly nonsmooth, piecewise smooth or semismooth nonlinear equations, or equivalent unconstrained optimization problems that are usually differentiable, but in general not twice differentiable. Because of the recent advent of various tools in nonsmooth analysis, the reformulation approach has become increasingly profound and diversified. In view of growing interests in this active field, we planned to organize a cluster of sessions entitled "Reformulation - Nonsmooth, Piecewise Smooth, Semismooth and Smoothing Methods" in the 16th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming (ismp97) held at Lausanne EPFL, Switzerland on August 24-29, 1997. Responding to our invitation, thirty-eight people agreed to give a talk within the cluster, which enabled us to organize thirteen sessions in total. We think that it was one of the largest and most exciting clusters in the symposium. Thanks to the earnest support by the speakers and the chairpersons, the sessions attracted much attention of the participants and were filled with great enthusiasm of the audience."