Logistics: From theory to application (ECCO XIV)

provides an excellent opportunity to discuss recent and important issues in combinatorial optimization and its applications. The group, which has about 500 members, is open to everybody interested in the field, either in theoretical aspects or in business, industry or public administration applications. During the first ten years, Catherine Roucairol (Université de Ver-sailles, France) coordinated the ECCO activities. The current coordinator is Silvano Martello (Università di Bologna, Italy). The ECCO meetings are held on a regular basis (once a year during Spring) and are devoted to all aspects of combinatorial optimization: operations management and logistics, production scheduling, location and distribution problems, resource allocation, flexible manufacturing, scheduling, VLSI design and computer design, network optimization, etc. Recently, special sessions in ECCO meetings put particular emphasis on new local search methods (tabu, genetic algorithms, simulated annealing), polyhedra approaches to difficult problems and recent developments in classical optimization problems (such as scheduling, assignment, knapsack, partitioning, etc). At ECCO meetings usually about 100 participants nicely combine scientific works and exchange of new ideas with an exciting atmosphere like