Indexed Models
Marcos Singer · 2019
This chapter addresses the most realistic problem modeling, that is, with multiple variables and described in a less structured way. It presents the theory through a number of practical management problems. The chapter review logistics planning, including product transportation, routing and the capacity utilization of airplanes. It discusses transfer models for electric power and currencies. The chapter introduces a number of production planning problems, including process management subject to a bill of materials. It describes the procurement problem, which consists of purchasing at a minimum cost subject to the requirements imposed by the firm. A transportation problem consists of minimizing the cost of dispatching a flow of products from several sources to several destinations. The utility of expressing optimization problems in terms of sets, parameters and variables is that it allows a direct translation to Microsoft Excel.