An overview of ORP $$^3$$ 3 -OR for young researchers and practitioners

Abstract

This volume of the Annals of Operations Research is devoted to the ORP3 or “the OR Peripatetic Post-Graduate Programme” Conference, held at the facilities of the University of Cadiz (Spain) from September 13 to 17, 2011. ORP3 is a sequence of conferences sponsored by EURO – The Association of European Operational Research Societies. Its objective is to promote collaboration and scientific and social exchanges between young OR researchers and practitioners. Before the 2011 meeting in Cadiz, four conferences were held: Paris (2001), Lambrecht (2003), Valencia (2005), and Guimaraes (2007). The ORP3 events are not restricted to specific fields and they accept any topic within the general scope of operations research. Nevertheless, in Cadiz the following topics were especially welcome: integer programming and combinatorial optimization, discrete optimization, graphs and networks, location theory, transportation and logistics, game theory, network optimization,multicriteria optimization, productionmanagement, supply chainmanagement, and routing problems. Due to capacity constraints, participation in the Cadiz meeting was limitted to a group of 36. Applicants were considered only if they were either young PhD students, young postdocs, or young faculty in OR (having completed the doctoral thesis a maximum of two years before the deadline for submission), or young OR analysts (having a maximum of two years of professional experience at the deadline for submission). The selection of participants by the Scientific Committee was based only on the quality of their full paper submissions. Papers were expected to contain high quality material that would be publishable in an international