Appendices A Rotastore A. l Tabular Results for Different Models A. 2 Tabular Results for Different Algorithms B OptiTrans B. l Input Data B. l. l Input Data Common to all Solution Approaches B. 1. 2 Specific Input Data for the MILP Model and the Column Enumeration Approach B. 1. 3 Specific Input Data for the Heuristic Methods B. 1. 3. 1 Penalty Criteria B. 1. 3. 2 Control Parameters of the OptiTrans Software B. 2 Tabular Results B. 2. 1 Tabular Results for the MILP Model B. 2. 2 Tabular Results for the Heuristic Methods B. 2. 2. 1 Input Data for a Whole Day - Offline Analysis B. 2. 2. 2 Results for CIH and SA References Index Preface This book covers the analysis and development of online algorithms involving exact optimization and heuristic techniques, and their appli- tion to solve two real life problems. The first problem is concerned with a complex technical system: a special carousel based high-speed storage system - Rotastore. It is shown that this logistic problem leads to an NP-hard Batch Presorting Pr- lem (BPSP) which is not easy to solve optimally in offline situations. We consider a polynomial case and develope an exact algorithm for offline situations. Competitive analysis showed that the proposed online - gorithm is 312-competitive. Online algorithms with lookahead improve the online solutions in particular cases. If the capacity constraint on additional storage is neglected the problem has a totally unimodular polyhedron.

"Systems Thinking is a topic which is at the forefront of how we think about management in the Public Sector and Service Industries. This collection from leading thinkers in the field takes a case study approach to a variety of issues which encompass topics such as Banking, Electrical Distribution, Manufacturing and Adult Social Care"--

Over the past ten years, there has been growing interest in the process of strategic decision-making among both managers and researchers. Strategic decisions are important for five main reasons: They are large-scale, risky and hard to reverse; they are a bridge between deliberate and emerging strategies; they can be a major source of organizational learning; they play an important part in the development of individual managers and they cut accross functions and academic disciplines. Strategic Decisions summarizes the current state of the art in research on strategic decision-making, with chapters prepared by leading strategy researchers. The editors also present implications for current application and proposed directions for future research.

Banking is now an active asset-liability risk management enterprise, attributable in large part to the globalization of commerce. The authors of this descriptive yet practical, applications-oriented book examine the sources and management of traditional and nontraditional banking risks, then the conventional on-balance sheet and the modern off-balance sheet risk management methods. Unlike other more general risk management books, however, they focus closely on the use of financial derivatives--instruments to control the core risks attributable to credit and to fluctuations in interest and foreign exchange rates. The authors cover all this and more, giving experienced and novice practitioners both an easily accessed way to understand and cope with the banking risks they are already familiar with, and the new risks just emerging. The book will also be useful as a supplemental text in college-level courses on money and banking and on the operation of financial markets in general.

The authors begin by explaining how banking has moved from a routine financial process to an active and impersonal process of risk management, from relationship banking to community banking. Even banks that have stayed with traditional lending are now assuming greater risks. The authors then focus on the details of measuring, monitoring, and controlling risks. They define risk and the different philosophical approaches to its management, then continue with a discussion of operational matters, such as risk identification and classification. They discuss the evolution of banking risk management and the banking environment of the 20th Century, with special attention to the differences in methods used during the time of fragmented and highly regulated economies and those used in the highly integrated global economies of the last quarter century. The book describes in useful detail the major financial derivative products: forwards, options, caps, collars, and swaps, and their uses as risk management devices and tools for speculation, both. The book also treats on-balance sheet risk management methods, such as credit options and credit swaps. Interest rate risk is also covered in detail, and so too the management of foreign currency risk.

The purpose of Multiple Criteria Analysis in Strategic Siting Problems is to demonstrate how multiple criteria can be used in analysis of facility location problems. The book begins with an overview, explains the internationally most popular multiple objective analysis methods, and demonstrates their applications on real problems. Siting problems reviewed include nuclear waste disposal in the U.S., solid waste management in Finland, pipeline location in India, and pipeline location in Russia. Methods covered are multiattribute utility analysis, analytic hierarchy process, the ELECTRE outranking method, and verbal decision analysis. The book concludes with a comparative review of methods. The book uses the multi-attribute, multi-party framework of Kunreuther to present the decision context, to include parties with interests in the decisions, as well as the sequence of project events. This perspective is valuable in identifying the qualitative backgrounds of siting problems that need to be considered. The book demonstrates the importance of multiple criteria in hazardous facility site selection. It also shows how each of the four methodologies covered operate, both in terms of demonstration problems worked with numbers, and how these methods have been applied in the real applications. The real applications were taken from refereed journal documentation, with the exception of Russian pipeline analysis decisions in which Professor Larichev participated. The book is recommended for those interested in decision-making involving problems with social import. This includes environmental aspects, as well as international aspects of decision making.

This work results from my interest in the field of vector optimiza tion. I stumbled first upon this subject in 1982 during my six months visit to the Istituto di Elaborazione della Informazione in Pisa, Italy, supported by a fellowship of the (Italian) Consiglio Nationale delle Richerche. I was attracted then by a gap between vector optimiza tion used to serve as a formal model for multiple objective decision problems and the decision problems themselves, the gap nonexis tent in scalar optimization. Roughly speaking, vector optimization provides methods for ranking decisions according to a partial order whereas decision making requires a linear ordering of decisions. The book deals with vector optimization. However, vector opti mization is considered here not only as a topic of research in itself but also as a basic tool for decision making. In consequence, all results presented here are aimed at exploiting and understanding the structure of elements (decisions) framed by a vector optimiza tion problem with the underlying assumption that the results should be interpretable in terms and applicable in the context of decision making. Computational tractability of results is therefore of special concern throughout this book. A unified framework for presentation is offered by the Cone Sep aration Technique (CST) founded on the notion of cone separation."

The essays and lectures collected in this book center around knowledge transfer from the complex-system sciences to applications in business, industry and society, as viewed from a broad perspective. The contributions aim to raise awareness across the spectrum to meet the increasing need to integrate lessons from complexity research into everyday planning, decision making, logistics or optimization procedures and forecasting. The writing has been largely kept non-technical.

Knowledge Unplugged announces the results of a major survey of knowledge management practice within the most influential companies in the world, by the most influential management consultancy group in the world. The McKinsey Knowledge Management team interviewed top executives and also investigated how far their plans were implemented in practice, in 40 companies in the US, Europe and Japan. In many companies they discovered a significant gap between the vision at the top and the reality on the shop floor. Knowledge Unplugged draws together their findings and presents a practical guide to improving knowledge building and sharing at all levels within an organization, vividly illustrated with case studies of best practice and common pitfalls. They argue that knowledge management is much more than simply installing a new database and can only be successful when it is at the heart of everyday personal exchanges, personal incentives and personal responsibilities at every level of the firm.

A compact guide to knowledge management, this book makes the subject accessible without oversimplifying it. Organizational issues like strategy and culture are discussed in the context of typical knowledge management processes. The focus is always on pointing out all the issues that need to be taken into account in order to make knowledge management a success. The book then goes on to explore the role of information technology as an enabler of knowledge management relating various technologies to the knowledge management processes, showing the reader what can, and what cannot, be achieved through technology. Throughout the book, references to lessons learned from past projects underline the arguments. Managers will find this book a valuable guide for implementing their own initiatives, while researchers and system designers will find plenty of ideas for future work.

This book recommends and examines the various approaches to incorporating an accurate measure of risk into the appraisal of an international investment. It considers the way in which decisions on international investment projects are taken and how they should be. It critiques and integrates existing theories, including the global capital asset pricing rule of financial theory, theories of strategy making and the real options approach, to show how risk should be incorporated into the present value formula and its various elements to produce a clear decision rule.

Since the publication of the 2nd edition of The Credit Risk of Complex Derivatives in 1997, the world of derivatives has gone through a period of dramatic change in the external operating environment, product and market characteristic and risk management techniques. In the light of these changes, the text has been substantially reorganized, updated and expanded. Several new chapters have been added including: derivative losses risk governance and risk management efforts regulatory initiatives and advances credit risk portfolio models Aimed at clients, intermediaries and regulators, this new edition will be focussed clearly on risk education, risk management and risk disclosure in order to make participation in derivatives more secure, transparent, efficient and beneficial. MARKET 1: Senior Managers; Risk Managers; Compliance Managers; Consultants; Trading and Sales Staff; Quantitative Analysts; Credit Analysts; Regulators MARKET 2: MBA courses

Mathematical models are being increasingly used to estimate the concentrations of a wide range of substances in the environment for a variety of reasons, including government control and legislation, and risk and hazard estimation. Exposure assessment has to be performed for many types of substances, including pesticides, industrial chemicals, pollutants, accidental discharges, etc. The interpretation of the results of model equations should always bear in mind the purpose for which the model used was built in the first place. Further, models are always an abstraction of reality, requiring simplifying assumptions to keep the models within the restraints posed by computer performance and/or scientific knowledge. The present book treats the theme of modelling chemical exposure and risk in terms of four main topics: model characteristics, applications, comparison of estimated with measured concentrations, and modelling credibility.

p>Imagine what your life would be like if you could apply the same strategies that successful people used to get ahead.

These are the folks who live in the grand houses that you see when you drive down certain streets. They drive nice cars and dine at the best restaurants. They live their lives like absolute superstars.

Join business consultant John M. Hawkins, who learned long ago that the secret to success is building a strategic plan to get what you want. He provides a detailed road map so you can join the ranks of the most successful. You'll learn how to - build a smart, strategic plan; - take risks (and when to take them); - change the way you think about challenges; - maintain your focus and stick to your plan.

Follow in the footsteps of strategic thinkers and get exactly where you want to go. All you have to do is start thinking like a millionaire and say "yes" to success. It starts with "Building a Strategic Plan for Your Life and Business."

Enterprise Modeling: Improving Global Industrial Competitiveness gives an overview of the current state-of-the-art in enterprise modeling and its application. Enterprise modeling is both a concept and a tool that is highly developed at the research level, but which still promises many new industrial applications. Enterprise models constitute a theoretical basis for the information system in an enterprise and are regarded by many as a substantial opportunity to improve global industrial competitiveness. Enterprise Modeling: Improving Global Industrial Competitiveness gives the reader an understanding of enterprise modeling as a concept and provides examples of its application by describing some of the currently available tools. It is organized in five parts: overview and international trends, the basis of enterprise modeling, application areas, implementation, and industrial experience with enterprise modeling. Enterprise Modeling: Improving Global Industrial Competitiveness is useful to developers of business information systems, users of technical information systems, engineers within operations management, and engineers and economists dealing with performance assessment and improvement. Enterprise Modeling: Improving Global Industrial Competitiveness is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate level course, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

This book presents the content of a year's course in decision processes for third and fourth year students given at the University of Toronto. A principal theme of the book is the relationship between normative and descriptive decision theory. The distinction between the two approaches is not clear to everyone, yet it is of great importance. Normative decision theory addresses itself to the question of how people ought to make decisions in various types of situations, if they wish to be regarded (or to regard themselves) as 'rational'. Descriptive decision theory purports to describe how people actually make decisions in a variety of situations. Normative decision theory is much more formalized than descriptive theory. Especially in its advanced branches, normative theory makes use of mathematicallanguage, mode of discourse, and concepts. For this reason, the definitions of terms encountered in normative decision theory are precise, and its deductions are rigorous. Like the terms and assertions of other branches of mathematics, those of mathematically formalized decision theory need not refer to anything in the 'real', i. e. the observable, world. The terms and assertions can be interpreted in the context of models of real li fe situations, but the verisimilitude of the models is not important. They are meant to capture only the essentials of adecision situation, which in reallife may be obscured by complex details and ambiguities. It is these details and ambiguities, however, that may be crucial in determining the outcomes of the decisions.

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 problems dealt with in this book assume, on the contrary, that the "target" is an independent player of equal status to the Searcher, who cares about when he is found. We consider two possible motives of the target, and divide the book accordingly. Book I considers the zero-sum game that results when the target (here called the Hider) does not want to be found. Such problems have been called Search Games (with the "ze- sum" qualifier understood). Book II considers the opposite motive of the target, namely, that he wants to be found. In this case the Searcher and the Hider can be thought of as a team of agents (simply called Player I and Player II) with identical aims, and the coordination problem they jointly face is called the Rendezvous Search Problem.

Problems with multiple objectives and criteria are generally known as multiple criteria optimization or multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems. So far, these types of problems have typically been modelled and solved by means of linear programming. However, many real-life phenomena are of a nonlinear nature, which is why we need tools for nonlinear programming capable of handling several conflicting or incommensurable objectives. In this case, methods of traditional single objective optimization and linear programming are not enough; we need new ways of thinking, new concepts, and new methods - nonlinear multiobjective optimization. Nonlinear Multiobjective Optimization provides an extensive, up-to-date, self-contained and consistent survey, review of the literature and of the state of the art on nonlinear (deterministic) multiobjective optimization, its methods, its theory and its background. The amount of literature on multiobjective optimization is immense. The treatment in this book is based on approximately 1500 publications in English printed mainly after the year 1980. Problems related to real-life applications often contain irregularities and nonsmoothnesses. The treatment of nondifferentiable multiobjective optimization in the literature is rather rare. For this reason, this book contains material about the possibilities, background, theory and methods of nondifferentiable multiobjective optimization as well. This book is intended for both researchers and students in the areas of (applied) mathematics, engineering, economics, operations research and management science; it is meant for both professionals and practitioners in many different fields of application. The intention has been to provide a consistent summary that may help in selecting an appropriate method for the problem to be solved. It is hoped the extensive bibliography will be of value to researchers.

Advanced communications and information technologies provide the basis for operational risk management. In order to support managers in real-time risk assessment and decision-making, the advanced technologies must be complemented by an appropriate reasoning logic. This book presents such a reasoning logic for operational risk management. Chapter 1 discusses the need for operational risk management and the feasibility of its use based upon advances in sensing, mobile communications, and satellite positioning technologies. Chapter II presents a reasoning logic for operational risk management that capitalizes upon these developments. Chapter III illustrates the integration of the reasoning logic in hypermedia, multimedia, and virtual reality systems, coupled with the capabilities provided by the Internet. Chapters IV-VI illustrate the realism of operational risk management for hazardous material transportation, emergency response, air raid command, and emergency response at a nuclear power generation facility. The book closes with an experimental assessment of the logic and associated decision aids in Chapter VII. Audience: Researchers, who will find the most recent advances in operational risk management with experimental assessments. Practitioners, who are provided with a detailed description of operational risk management and the latest advances in information and communications technologies to implement this new approach for managing risks in operational settings, such as transportation of hazardous materials and emergency response. Students, who will learn the basic concepts in theory and practice of building models for decision and risk analysis, and embedding them into commercial software as decision support systems.