Fuzzy Mathematical Programming

Book excerpt: In the last 25 years, the fuzzy set theory has been applied in many disciplines such as operations research, management science, control theory,artificial intelligence/expert system, etc. In this volume, methods and applications of fuzzy mathematical programming and possibilistic mathematical programming are first systematically and thoroughly reviewed and classified. This state-of-the-art survey provides readers with a capsule look into the existing methods, and their characteristics and applicability to analysis of fuzzy and possibilistic programming problems. To realize practical fuzzy modelling, we present solutions for real-world problems including production/manufacturing, transportation, assignment, game, environmental management, resource allocation, project investment, banking/finance, and agricultural economics. To improve flexibility and robustness of fuzzy mathematical programming techniques, we also present our expert decision-making support system IFLP which considers and solves all possibilities of a specific domain of (fuzzy) linear programming problems. Basic fuzzy set theories, membership functions, fuzzy decisions, operators and fuzzy arithmetic are introduced with simple numerical examples in aneasy-to-read and easy-to-follow manner. An updated bibliographical listing of 60 books, monographs or conference proceedings, and about 300 selected papers, reports or theses is presented in the end of this study.