Hints for practical robust optimization

Abstract: Robust optimization (RO) is a young and active research field that has been mainly developed in the last 15 years. RO techniques are very useful for practice and not difficult to understand for practitioners. It is therefore remarkable that real-life applications of RO are still lagging behind; there is much more potential for real-life applications than has been exploited hitherto. The aim of this paper is to help practitioners to successfully apply RO in practice. We pinpoint several important items that may be helpful for successfully applying RO. We use many small examples to illustrate our discussions.