Assignment Problems

Assignment Problems is a useful tool for researchers, practitioners and graduate students. In 10 self-contained chapters, it provides a comprehensive treatment of assignment problems from their conceptual beginnings through present-day theoretical, algorithmic and practical developments. The topics covered include bipartite matching algorithms, linear assignment problems, quadratic assignment problems, multi-index assignment problems and many variations of these. Researchers will benefit from the detailed exposition of theory and algorithms related to assignment problems, including the basic linear sum assignment problem and its variations. Practitioners will learn about practical applications of the methods, the performance of exact and heuristic algorithms, and software options. This book also can serve as a text for advanced courses in areas related to discrete mathematics and combinatorial optimisation. The revised reprint provides details on a recent discovery related to one of Jacobi's results, new material on inverse assignment problems and quadratic assignment problems, and an updated bibliography.

Rainer Burkard is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Graz University of Technology, Austria. He has published several books and over 150 papers on discrete optimisation and related areas. His main research focus is combinatorial optimisation and its applications.

Mauro Dell'Amico is a Professor of Operations Research at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. His research interests are combinatorial optimisation as applied to transportation, telecommunications, routing and scheduling.

Silvano Martello is a Professor of Operations Research at the University of Bologna, Italy. He is author of Knapsack Problems: Algorithms and Computer Implementations (1990) and Editor-in-Chief of 4OR: A Quarterly Journal of Operations Research. His research focus is the design of algorithms for combinatorial optimisation and graph theory problems and their application in packing, routing and scheduling.