Many business, economic, and engineering problems involve devising means of achieving optimal results in the face of a series of restrictions. These restrictions may assume a variety of forms. Plant or machine capacities, labor requirements, market restrictions, procedural and policy conditions, financial limitations, etc., are examples common to many kinds of business. Other examples may be specialized to more narrow groups of firms. It is, therefore, desirable to develop modes of attacking such problems which will provide a general and economical method of (1) determining best or optimal solutions within the stipulated limitations and (2) assessing the economic cost of the restrictions and, therefore, the worthwhileness of altering them. Operations Research, ISSN 0030-364X, was published as Journal of the Operations Research Society of America from 1952 to 1955 under ISSN 0096-3984.