A special goal for this edition has been to add substantial coverage of dramatic, recent developments that are beginning to revolutionize how certain areas of operations research are being practiced. These recent developments include (1) the use of metaheuristics to solve large, complex problems, (2) the integration of constraint programming with mathematical programming (especially integer programming) to greatly expand our ability to formulate complicated problems, and (3) the use of multiechelon inventory models to aid supply chain management. Although these topics traditionally have not been covered in introductory survey courses, their dramatically increased importance for future practitioners of operations research now demands thir inclusion in a modern introductory OR textbook.so I have added the followig meterial.
- New Chapter 13:Metaheuristics.
- New Section 11.9: The Incorporation of Constraint Programming.
- New Section 18.5: Multiechelon Inventory Models for Supply Chain Management.
Another dramatic development in recent years has been an explosion in the use of spreadsheets and spreadsheet software to formulate and solve OR models, including especially mathematical programming models and simulation models. Therefore, I have added the following spreadsheet material.
- Expansion of Section 3.6:Formulating and Solving Linear Programming Models on a Spreadsheet.
- New Section 6.8: Performing Sensitivity Analysis on a Spreadsheet.
- New Section 12.10: Nonconvex Programming (with Spredsheets)
- New Section 15.5: Using Spreadsheets to Perform Sensitivity Analysis on Decision Trees.
- Complete rewrite of Section 20.6: Performing Simulations on Spreadsheets.
- New Section 20.7: Optimizing with OptQuest.
- New Chapter 21 (on CD-ROM and website): The Art of Modeling with Spreadsheets.
- New Section 27.7 (on CD-ROM and website): Time Series Forecasting with CB Predictor.
- New Chapter 28 (on CD-ROM and website): Examples of Performing Simulations with Crystal Ball.
- New Supplement to Chapter 8 (on CD-ROM and website): A Case Study with Many Transportation Problems.
However, some instructors prefer to have their students use convenient traditional software (LINDO and LINGO) or state-of-the-art OR software (MPL and CPLEX) instead of spreadsheets. I have retained the philosophy of the 7th edition of providing enough introduction in the book to enable the use of any of the three options (plus OR Tutor and IOR Tutorial to help learn algorithms efficiently) without distracting those using another of the options (while also providing ample supporting material for each option on the CD_ROM). Therefore, this new spreadsheet material always is near or at the end of a chapter (or on the CD-ROM and website) so that it can easily be passed over by those using another software option. At the same time, I have updated the LINDO/LINGO and MPL/CPLEX material, including some expansion of Sec. 3.7 (Formulating Very Large Linear Programming Models) that features MPL.
We solicited extensive feedback from many instructors to guide the planning of this new edition. In response to a significant number of requests, we have added the following traditional topics.
- New Section 8.4: A Special Algorithm for the Assignment Problem, presenting the Humgarian algorithm.
- Addition to Sections 12.4and12.5: Newton's method for unconstrained optimization.
You also will find a number of smaller additions in various parts of the book.
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Overview of the Operations Research Modeing Approach
Chapter 3 Introduction to Linear Programming
Chapter 4 Solving Linear Programming Problems: TheSimplex Method
Chapter 5 The Theory of the Simplex Method
Chapter 6 Duality Theory and Sensitivity Analysis
Chapter 7 Other Algorithms for Linear Programming
Chapter 8 The Transportation and Assignment Problems
Chapter 9 Network Optimization Models
Chapter 10 Dynamic Programming
,etc.