As operations research (OR) applications continue to grow and flourish in a number of decision making fields, a reference that is comprehensive, concise, and easy to read is more than a nicety, it is a necessity. This book provides a single volume overview of OR applications in practice, making it the first resource a practitioner would reach for w

This book offers a comprehensive reference guide to operations research theory and applications in health care systems. It provides readers with all the necessary tools for solving health care problems. The respective chapters, written by prominent researchers, explain a wealth of both basic and advanced concepts of operations research for the management of operating rooms, intensive care units, supply chain, emergency medical service, human resources, lean health care, and procurement. To foster a better understanding, the chapters include relevant examples or case studies. Taken together, they form an excellent reference guide for researchers, lecturers and postgraduate students pursuing research on health care management problems. The book presents a dynamic snapshot on the field that is expected to stimulate new directions and stimulate new ideas and developments.

The book provides insights in the decision-making for implementing strategies in various spheres of real-world issues. It integrates optimal policies in various decision­making problems and serves as a reference for researchers and industrial practitioners. Furthermore, the book provides sound knowledge of modelling of real-world problems and solution procedure using the various optimisation and statistical techniques for making optimal decisions. The book is meant for teachers, students, researchers and industrialists who are working in the field of materials science, especially operations research and applied statistics.

These proceedings consist of 30 selected research papers based on results presented at the 10th Balkan Conference & 1st International Symposium on Operational Research (BALCOR 2011) held in Thessaloniki, Greece, September 22-24, 2011. BALCOR is an established biennial conference attended by a large number of faculty, researchers and students from the Balkan countries but also from other European and Mediterranean countries as well. Over the past decade, the BALCOR conference has facilitated the exchange of scientific and technical information on the subject of Operations Research and related fields such as Mathematical Programming, Game Theory, Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis, Information Systems, Data Mining and more, in order to promote international scientific cooperation. The carefully selected and refereed papers present important recent developments and modern applications and will serve as excellent reference for students, researchers and practitioners in these disciplines. ​

Operations Research is a bouquet of mathematical techniques which have evolved over the last six decades, to improve the process of business decision making. Operations Research offers tools to optimize and find the best solutions to myriad decisions that managers have to take in their day to day operations or while carrying out strategic planning. Today, with the advent of operations research software, these tools can be applied by managers even without any knowledge of the mathematical techniques that underlie the solution procedures. The book starts with a brief introduction to various tools of operations research, such as linear programming, integer programming, multi-objective programming, queuing theory and network theory together with simple examples in each of the areas. Another introductory chapter on handling the operations research software, along with examples is also provided. The book intends to make the readers aware of the power and potential of operations research in addressing decision making in areas of operations, supply chain, financial and marketing management. The approach of this book is to demonstrate the solution to specific problems in these areas using operations research techniques and software. The reader is encouraged to use the accompanying software models to solve these problems, using detailed do-it-yourself instructions. The intended outcome for readers of this book will be gaining familiarity and an intuitive understanding of the various tools of operations research and their applications to various business situations. It is expected that this will give the reader the ability and confidence to devise models for their own business needs.

This textbook is comprised of detailed case studies covering challenging real world applications of OR techniques. Among the overall goals of the book is to provide readers with descriptions of the history and other background information on a variety of industries, service or other organizations in which decision making is an important component of their daily operations. The book considers all methods of optimum decision making in order to improve performances. It also compares possible solutions obtained by different approaches, concluding with a recommendation of the best among them for implementation. By exposing students to a variety of applications in a variety of areas and explaining how they can be modeled and solved, the book helps students develop the skills needed for modeling and solving problems that they may face in the workplace. Each chapter of "Case Studies in Operations Research: Applications of Optimal Decision Making" also includes additional data provided on the book’s website on Springer.com. These files contain a brief description of the area of application, the problem and the required outputs. Also provided are links to access all the data in the problem. Finally there are project exercises for students to practice what they have learnt in the chapter, which can also be used by instructors as project assignments in their courses.