The sales force deployment problem is considered which arises in many selling organizations. As a solution a novel mixed-integer formulation is introduced which is specifically characterized by an infinite number of variables. A column generation approach is proposed to obtain upper and lower...

The Capacitated Facility Location Problem (CFLP) is a well-known combinatorial optimization problem with applications in distribution and production planning. A variety of lower bounds based on Lagrangean relaxation and subgradient optimization has been proposed for this problem. However, in...

A flow line consists of a sequence of work places (or stations) through which one or more producta (or models) move one-way in order to be processed. Each model requires specific Operations which must be performed in a predefined Order. To be able to do so, the stations must be equipped with...

The sales territory alignment problem deals with the question of how to align a number of sales coverage units (usually zip-codes or political districts) to sales territories. These sales territories are usually aligned in a way that they are almost balanced relative to one or several attributes...

We consider a rich tanker trailer routing problem with stochastic transit times for chemicals and liquid bulk orders. A typical route of the tanker trailer comprises of sourcing a cleaned and prepped trailer from a pre-wash location, pickup and delivery of chemical orders, cleaning the tanker...

Sales force management decisions belong to the major issues considered in marketing research. Among others, the alignment of sales territories has been one of the main field of work for years. Recent results have reported a strong impact of the alignment of sales territories on profit, and,...

The resource investment problem deals with the issue of providing resources to a project such that a given deadline can be met. The objective is to make the resources available in the cheapest possible way. For each resource, expenses depend on the maximum amount required during the course of...

The staff scheduling problem in the retail business is considered for which a new mathematical model and new solution methods are introduced. The problem is formalized as a set covering type problem. Columns represent feasible weekly working time patterns of one sales clerk. Rows correspond to...

In project management, the project duration can often be compressed by accelerating some of its activities at an additional expense. This is the so-called time-cost tradeoff problem which has been extensively studied in the past. However, the discrete version of the problem which is of great...

Airline rescheduling is a relatively new field in airline Operations Research but increasing amounts of traffic will make disturbances to the original schedule more frequent and more severe, and thus the need to address the various problems arising from this situation with systematic,...