Everyday, we likely to encounter situations where we have to decide how to allocate scarce resources. For instance, in a manufacturing company, equipment are to be received by different plants. Another example is in an accounting firm where audit managers must schedule their staff to the different jobs running at the same time, subject to the staff availability. One further example can be found in a company providing dating service to clients, in which couples are matched according to their desire and their other expectations of a date. Although these problems may seems to be very different, they all belongs to the same class of optimization model, namely, assignment problems. The goal in these types of problems is to obtain the best result, whether it is to lower cost, or to maximize the utility of the situation. They are also characterized by the availability of the scarce resource and to meet the demand requirement.

On the next page, we will explore a specific incidence of the assignment problem, which will assign available teachers to school with a demand for such teachers. Please click the right arrow now. Or else press left arrow to go back to main menu.

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