The principle aim of this book, entitled "Operations ResearchlManagement Science at Work", is to provide a summary snapshot of recent research in and applications of Operations Research (OR)/ Management Science (MS) in the Asia-pacific region. The book emphasises research having potential industry interest, covering a wide range of topics from major fields of ORIMS in a systematic and coherent fashion and shows the elegance of their implementations. The book is intended to serve the needs of applied researchers who are interested in applications of ORIMS algorithms. The book includes descriptions of many real-world problems together with their solutions; we hope the reader will appreciate their applicability. The Asia-pacific region has embraced business applications of decision support systems in recent years. Given that many of these applications are unaffected by legacy models or systems it has meant that state of the art ORIMS techniques have been embedded in them. Moreover, the increased use of OR/MS techniques in this region provides opportunities for identifying methodological advances that are taking place as a result of the unique nature of the applications. These also provide opportunities for exploring synergies and interfaces that exist between OR/MS, from the point of view of applications as well as theoretical advances.
