A presentation of general results for discussing local optimality and computation of the expansion of value function and approximate solution of optimization problems, followed by their application to various fields, from physics to economics. The book is thus an opportunity for popularizing these techniques among researchers involved in other sciences, including users of optimization in a wide sense, in mechanics, physics, statistics, finance and economics. Of use to research professionals, including graduate students at an advanced level.

Discrete event systems (DES) have become pervasive in our daily lives. Examples include (but are not restricted to) manufacturing and supply chains, transportation, healthcare, call centers, and financial engineering. However, due to their complexities that often involve millions or even billions of events with many variables and constraints, modeling these stochastic simulations has long been a “hard nut to crack”. The advance in available computer technology, especially of cluster and cloud computing, has paved the way for the realization of a number of stochastic simulation optimization for complex discrete event systems. This book will introduce two important techniques initially proposed and developed by Professor Y C Ho and his team; namely perturbation analysis and ordinal optimization for stochastic simulation optimization, and present the state-of-the-art technology, and their future research directions.

This volume contains a collection of papers based on lectures and presentations delivered at the International Conference on Constructive Nonsmooth Analysis (CNSA) held in St. Petersburg (Russia) from June 18-23, 2012. This conference was organized to mark the 50th anniversary of the birth of nonsmooth analysis and nondifferentiable optimization and was dedicated to J.-J. Moreau and the late B.N. Pshenichnyi, A.M. Rubinov, and N.Z. Shor, whose contributions to NSA and NDO remain invaluable. The first four chapters of the book are devoted to the theory of nonsmooth analysis. Chapters 5-8 contain new results in nonsmooth mechanics and calculus of variations. Chapters 9-13 are related to nondifferentiable optimization, and the volume concludes with four chapters containing interesting and important historical chapters, including tributes to three giants of nonsmooth analysis, convexity, and optimization: Alexandr Alexandrov, Leonid Kantorovich, and Alex Rubinov. The last chapter provides an overview and important snapshots of the 50-year history of convex analysis and optimization.

The book presents a treatment of topological and differential properties of multivalued mappings and marginal functions. In addition, applications to sensitivity analysis of nonlinear programming problems under perturbations are studied. Properties of marginal functions associated with optimization problems are analyzed under quite general constraints defined by means of multivalued mappings. A unified approach to directional differentiability of functions and multifunctions forms the base of the volume. Nonlinear programming problems involving quasidifferentiable functions are considered as well. A significant part of the results are based on theories and concepts of two former Soviet Union researchers, Demyanov and Rubinov, and have never been published in English before. It contains all the necessary information from multivalued analysis and does not require special knowledge, but assumes basic knowledge of calculus at an undergraduate level.

Presents research contributions and tutorial expositions on current methodologies for sensitivity, stability and approximation analyses of mathematical programming and related problem structures involving parameters. The text features up-to-date findings on important topics, covering such areas as the effect of perturbations on the performance of algorithms, approximation techniques for optimal control problems, and global error bounds for convex inequalities.

Post-Optimal Analysis in Linear Semi-Infinite Optimization examines the following topics in regards to linear semi-infinite optimization: modeling uncertainty, qualitative stability analysis, quantitative stability analysis and sensitivity analysis. Linear semi-infinite optimization (LSIO) deals with linear optimization problems where the dimension of the decision space or the number of constraints is infinite. The authors compare the post-optimal analysis with alternative approaches to uncertain LSIO problems and provide readers with criteria to choose the best way to model a given uncertain LSIO problem depending on the nature and quality of the data along with the available software. This work also contains open problems which readers will find intriguing a challenging. Post-Optimal Analysis in Linear Semi-Infinite Optimization is aimed toward researchers, graduate and post-graduate students of mathematics interested in optimization, parametric optimization and related topics.

A presentation of general results for discussing local optimality and computation of the expansion of value function and approximate solution of optimization problems, followed by their application to various fields, from physics to economics. The book is thus an opportunity for popularizing these techniques among researchers involved in other sciences, including users of optimization in a wide sense, in mechanics, physics, statistics, finance and economics. Of use to research professionals, including graduate students at an advanced level.

The Symposium presented and discussed the latest research on new theories and advanced applications of automatic systems, which are developed for manufacturing technology or are applicable to advanced manufacturing systems. The topics included computer integrated manufacturing, simulation and the increasingly important areas of artificial intelligence and expert systems, and applied them to the broad spectrum of problems that the modern manufacturing engineer is likely to encounter in the design and application of increasingly complex automatic systems.

Semi-infinite programming (briefly: SIP) is an exciting part of mathematical programming. SIP problems include finitely many variables and, in contrast to finite optimization problems, infinitely many inequality constraints. Prob lems of this type naturally arise in approximation theory, optimal control, and at numerous engineering applications where the model contains at least one inequality constraint for each value of a parameter and the parameter, repre senting time, space, frequency etc., varies in a given domain. The treatment of such problems requires particular theoretical and numerical techniques. The theory in SIP as well as the number of numerical SIP methods and appli cations have expanded very fast during the last years. Therefore, the main goal of this monograph is to provide a collection of tutorial and survey type articles which represent a substantial part of the contemporary body of knowledge in SIP. We are glad that leading researchers have contributed to this volume and that their articles are covering a wide range of important topics in this subject. It is our hope that both experienced students and scientists will be well advised to consult this volume. We got the idea for this volume when we were organizing the semi-infinite pro gramming workshop which was held in Cottbus, Germany, in September 1996.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the Third International Conference on Numerical Analysis and Its Applications, NAA 2004, held in Rousse, Bulgaria in June/July 2004. The 68 revised full papers presented together with 8 invited papers were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement. All current aspects of numerical analysis are addressed. Among the application fields covered are computational sciences and engineering, chemistry, physics, economics, simulation, fluid dynamics, visualization, etc.