Mathematical Programming in American Companies: A Sample Survey

Numerous articles in the last two decades have demonstrated how mathematical programming techniques can be applied to a wide spectrum of problems in business. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the results of a sample survey which provides partial and tentative answers to the following four queries: 1 Who is adopting mathematical programming models? 2 What has been the quality of the results? 3 In which specific areas have such models been used? and 4 Why have firms not adopted mathematical programming techniques?