The volume comprises a collection of 172 extented abstracts of talks presented at the 16th Symposium on Operations Rese- arch held at the University of Trier in September 1991. It is designated to serve as a quickly published documentation of the scientific activities of the conference. Subjects and areas touched upon include theory, modelling and computational methods in optimization, combinatorial op- timization and discrete mathematics, combinatorial problems in VLSI, scientific computing, stochastic and dynamic opti- mization, queuing, scheduling, stochastics and econometrics, mathematical economics and game theory, utility, risk, insu- rance, financial engineering, computer science in business and economics, knowledge engineering and production and ma- nufacturing.

The volume contains a selection of manuscripts of lectures presented at the International Symposi um on Operations Research (SOR 96). The Symposium took place at the Technical University of Braunschweig, September 3-6, 1996. SOR 96 was organized under the auspices of the two German societies of Operations Research, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Operations Research (DGOR) and Gesellschaft fur Mathematik, Okonomie and Operations Research (GMOOR) in cooperation with the Working Group Discrete Optimization of the IFIP (WG7.4). Since 1995, DGOR and GMOORjointly prepare the Symposium as a common annual conference. In particular, the annual general meetings of the DGOR, the GMOOR and the WG7.4 took place during the conference. The Symposi~m had 527 participants from 32 countries around the world, including 92 partici pants from Eastern Europe. The Symposium obviously attracts an international audience of workers fully covering the broad spectrum of Operations Research and related areas in economics, mathema tics and computer science. The importance of a highly interdisciplinary field as Operations Research is increasing owing to the growth in applications in related disciplines. Technological advances in computer science and algorithmic mathematics are crucial for attacking the great challenges waiting in the areas of applications of Operations Research effectively. As a participant of SOR 96 one could well observe the current pace of achievements. Many of these results are in these proceedings. The program consisted of two plenary, 17 semiplenary, and 335 contributed lectures in 18 sections.

Students with diverse backgrounds will face a multitude of decisions in a variety of engineering, scientific, industrial, and financial settings. They will need to know how to identify problems that the methods of operations research (OR) can solve, how to structure the problems into standard mathematical models, and finally how to apply or develop computational tools to solve the problems. Perfect for any one-semester course in OR, Operations Research: A Practical Introduction answers all of these needs. In addition to providing a practical introduction and guide to using OR techniques, it includes a timely examination of innovative methods and practical issues related to the development and use of computer implementations. It provides a sound introduction to the mathematical models relevant to OR and illustrates the effective use of OR techniques with examples drawn from industrial, computing, engineering, and business applications Many students will take only one course in the techniques of Operations Research. Operations Research: A Practical Introduction offers them the greatest benefit from that course through a broad survey of the techniques and tools available for quantitative decision making. It will also encourage other students to pursue more advanced studies and provides you a concise, well-structured, vehicle for delivering the best possible overview of the discipline.