The volume contains a selection of manuscripts of lectures presented at the International Symposi­ um on Operations Research (SOR 96). The Symposium took place at the Technical University of Braunschweig, September 3-6, 1996. SOR 96 was organized under the auspices of the two German societies of Operations Research, Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Operations Research (DGOR) and Gesellschaft fur Mathematik, Okonomie and Operations Research (GMOOR) in cooperation with the Working Group Discrete Optimization of the IFIP (WG7.4). Since 1995, DGOR and GMOORjointly prepare the Symposium as a common annual conference. In particular, the annual general meetings of the DGOR, the GMOOR and the WG7.4 took place during the conference. The Symposi~m had 527 participants from 32 countries around the world, including 92 partici­ pants from Eastern Europe. The Symposium obviously attracts an international audience of workers fully covering the broad spectrum of Operations Research and related areas in economics, mathema­ tics and computer science. The importance of a highly interdisciplinary field as Operations Research is increasing owing to the growth in applications in related disciplines. Technological advances in computer science and algorithmic mathematics are crucial for attacking the great challenges waiting in the areas of applications of Operations Research effectively. As a participant of SOR 96 one could well observe the current pace of achievements. Many of these results are in these proceedings. The program consisted of two plenary, 17 semiplenary, and 335 contributed lectures in 18 sections.

Plenary Lecture.- Section 1: Linear Programming.- Section 2: Nonlinear Programming.- Section 3: Combinatorial and Discrete Optimization.- Section 4: Graph Algorithms and Complexity.- Section 5: Stochastic Models and Optimization.- Section 6: Scheduling.- Section 7: Production.- Section 8: Transportation.- Section 9: Macroeconomics, Economic Theory, Games.- Section 10: Statistics and Econometrics.- Section 11: Marketing and Data Analysis.- Section 12: Information and Decision Support Systems.- Section 13: Banking, Finance, Insurance.- Section 14: Environment, Energy, Health.- Section 15: Neural Networks and Fuzzy Systems.- Section 16: Control Theory.- Section 17: Simulation.- Section 18: Practical OR (Application Reports).- List of Authors and Co-authors.