Optimization is a serious issue, touching many aspects of our life and activity. But it has not yet been completely absorbed in our culture. In this book the authors point out how relatively young even the word “model” is. On top of that, the concept is rather elusive. How to deal with a technology that ?nds applicationsinthingsasdi?erentaslogistics,robotics,circuitlayout,?nancial deals and tra?c control? Although, during the last decades, we made signi?cant progress, the broad public remained largely unaware of that. The days of John von Neumann, with his vast halls full of people frantically working mechanical calculators are long gone. Things that looked completely impossible in my youth, like solving mixed integer problems are routine by now. All that was not just achieved by ever faster and cheaper computers, but also by serious progress in mathematics. But even in a world that more and more understands that it cannot a?ord to waste resources, optimization remains to a large extent unknown. R It is quite logical and also fortunate that SAP , the leading supplier of enterprise management systems has embedded an optimizer in his software. The authors have very carefully investigated the capabilities and the limits of APO. Remember that optimization is still a work in progress. We do not have the tool that does everything for everybody.
From the reviews:
"‘SAP APO’ stands for ‘SAP Advanced Planning and Optimizer.’ ... I recommend this book for personnel in corporations and governmental entities contemplating improving supply chain operations with SAP software. The book may also be of more general interest to operations researchers and mathematical optimization professionals, especially those interested in mixed integer linear programs, those wanting to keep their academic activities relevant to real-world concerns, and those wishing to gain experience in commercial applications." (R. Baker Kearfott, SIAM Review, Vol. 49 (2), 2007)
“This book presents results on how to solve industrial optimization problems using APO from SAP. ... This book is a comprehensive introduction to SAP APO, its opportunities and limits using interesting examples arising in practice. The book is equally interesting for use in undergraduate university courses as well as for practitioners.” (Erwin Pesch, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1214, 2011)
