"Preface This book was written primarily for SAS users in operational research, or simply OR. We use a wide range of OR optimization problems to demonstrate how the SAS/OR procedures work. The problems include single criterion optimization problems (e.g., transportation, assignment, transshipment, minimum-cost capacitated flow, maximum flow, shortest path, assembly line balancing, and traveling salesman), project management decision problems (e.g., critical path analysis, and program evaluation and review technique), printed circuit board (PCB) assembly problems (e.g., PCB assembly line assignment, PCB component allocation, and PCB component sequencing for pick-and-place machines), and multiple-criteria decision-making problems (e.g., analytic hierarchy process, multiple-criteria logistics distribution, ordered weighted averaging, data envelopment analysis, and Malmquist productivity index). The emphasis in this book is to use PROC OPTMODEL, which is the most recent development in SAS for optimization problems. The principles of several other procedures are also presented. We believe that this is the first book to extensively and successfully cover the application of SAS/OR procedures to OR problems. In addition, this book was written for undergraduate and postgraduate students in OR and those who are interested in mathematical modeling techniques. We formulated the OR problems mentioned earlier as various types of mathematical models, including linear programming, integer linear programming, and goal-programming models. We also show the transformation of the minima- type formulation into a minimization-type formulation"--
