Genetic Algorithms: No Panacea, but a Valuable Tool for the Operations Researcher

When I was invited to contribute this feature article, I did not realize quite how much work I was taking on! Thus, I am naturally pleased that the commentators all found something useful and interesting as a result of my labors, and I would like to thank them for their comments. There is a clear common thread running through the remarks of all of them—the question of how to decide what genetic algorithms (GAs) can do, or alternatively, the related question of how to make them do it better. Focusing on this question was one of my aims in writing the feature article, so the way they have picked this up and added their own insights is very helpful.