This volume represents tutorial presentations made at the 2006 INFORMS meeting held in

Pittsburgh, PA. The chapters in this volume span the range of OR/MS sectors that make this field exciting and relevant to academics and practitioners alike: analytic methods (deterministic and dynamic math programming and math programming under risk and uncertainty), application areas (production and inventory management, interactions between supply chain actors, and supply chain network design), and OR/MS practice (spreadsheet modeling and analysis). This volume, like its predecessors, will serve as a reference guide for best practices and cutting-edge research in OR/MS: It is a “go-to” guide for operations researchers. Moreover, the topics covered here are consistent with the theme of the 2006 INFORMS conference: a “renaissance” in operations research that has resulted in new theory, computational models, and applications that enable public and private organizations to identify new business models and develop competitive advantages.