This volume examines problem solving and applied systems aimed at improving performance and management of organizations. The book’s eight chapters are integrated into two parts: methodologies and techniques that discuss complex dynamic analysis of the organizations, participative processes for building trend scenarios, consultancy as a systemic intervention process, processes to promote innovative goals in organizations, and analytical processes and solid mathematical representation systems. The authors also include a model to urban parks location, an analytic model to urban services location, and a system to forecast demand with fussy sets. Describes methodologies to analyze processes in complex dynamic organizations, including as participative, interventional, innovative, and analytical approaches; Clarifies a strategies for providing structure to complex organizations and applying analytical methods to decision making; Illustrates problem holistic solving strategies; Explains how to approach several problems from a holistic point of view and how analyze the subjacent processes to make decisions.

The objective of this book is to provide a valuable compendium of problems as a reference for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, researchers and practitioners of operations research and management science. These problems can serve as a basis for the development or study of assignments and exams. Also, they can be useful as a guide for the first stage of the model formulation, i.e. the definition of a problem. The book is divided into 11 chapters that address the following topics: Linear programming, integer programming, non linear programming, network modeling, inventory theory, queue theory, tree decision, game theory, dynamic programming and markov processes. Readers are going to find a considerable number of statements of operations research applications for management decision-making. The solutions of these problems are provided in a concise way although all topics start with a more developed resolution. The proposed problems are based on the research experience of the authors in real-world companies so much as on the teaching experience of the authors in order to develop exam problems for industrial engineering and business administration studies.

The purpose of this book is to introduce and explain research at the boundary between two fields that view problem solving from different perspectives. Researchers in operations research and artificial intelligence have traditionally remained separate in their activities. Recently, there has been an explosion of work at the border of the two fields, as members of both communities seek to leverage their activities and resolve problems that remain intractable to pure operations research or artificial intelligence techniques. This book presents representative results from this current flurry of activity and provides insights into promising directions for continued exploration. This book should be of special interest to researchers in artificial intelligence and operations research because it exposes a number of applications and techniques, which have benefited from the integration of problem solving strategies. Even researchers working on different applications or with different techniques can benefit from the descriptions contained here, because they provide insight into effective methods for combining approaches from the two fields. Additionally, researchers in both communities will find a wealth of pointers to challenging new problems and potential opportunities that exist at the interface between operations research and artificial intelligence. In addition to the obvious interest the book should have for members of the operations research and artificial intelligence communities, the papers here are also relevant to members of other research communities and development activities that can benefit from improvements to fundamental problem solving approaches.