After the full success of the first four challenges ROADEF'99, ROADEF'2001, ROADEF2003 and ROADEF2005, the French Society of Operations Research and Decision Analysis (ROADEF) launchs every two years its challenge dedicated to industrial applications.

The subject of this 5th challenge is proposed by the operator FranceTélécom.
The novelty of this challenge is the possibility to use optimization solvers (cf. How to participate and planning).
The results will be presented at the triennial French speaking conference FRANCORO and the annual conference of the French Operations Research society ROADEF.
This joint conference FRANCORO V / ROADEF2007 will be held on february 20-23, 2007, in Grenoble, France.

This challenge isopento everybody, in particular to young researchers, except those working for the industrial partner having submitted the problem, or any of its subsidiaries.

We remind that this Challenge has double goals. On the one hand, it allows some of our industrial partners to witness recent developments in thefield of Op erations Research and Decision Analysis, and young researchers to face up to a decisional problem, often complex, occured in industry. The challenge will give them an opportunity to explore the requirements and difficulties encountered in industrial applications. On the other hand, we hope that this challenge will help to establish a permanent partnership between manufacturers and young scientists on industrial size projects which require both high scientific qualification and the real-life practices in companies making use of decision analysis.

Since the Senior category has been added, this challenge allows qualified researchers to show their knowledge and demonstrate their know-how on pratical problems. This gives opportunities to establish partnerships with indsutrial companies.

We encourage and invite industrial partners, public or private orgnizations to submit new proposals for forthcoming challenges.