Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering

We present a mixed integer nonlinear mathematical programming model, covering a broad range of Operations Research (OR) related topics. The case is designed to allow students to use knowledge acquired from OR and Management Science classes in order to model, analyze and provide concrete solutions for the considered problem. Due to its high practicality, this exercise is an ideal tool to make the OR domain more accessible and to learn how to balance the problem complexity with the availability of algorithms for its solution. The case has been proposed as a competitive challenge and has been assigned to students attending Engineering schools. Students were grouped into working teams and all teams competed against each other to get the best solution to win the challenge. Both the work-in-team and the challenge settings have been enjoyed by the students. During three preliminary lectures of 90 minutes, a brief review of OR related tools and a detailed description and analysis of the case study have been provided to the students. Successive periodical debriefing meeting sessions have been scheduled to engage and monitor students during the project development.