1. The University of Hohenheim

2. New Castle

3. Old Castle

4. Mercedes Museum

5. Inside the Mercedes Museum

6. Inside the Porsche Museum

7. The Black Forest

8. "Solitude" Castle

9. Parade

10. Musikhochschule

11. International Bach Academy

EU/MEeting 2007
8^th EU/MEeting on Metaheuristics in the Service Industry
04.10.2007-05.10.2007, Stuttgart, Germany

Scope
While the cost- and material-effective production of tangible goods has been the emphasis of early industrialization, developed countries show an increasing importance of services. Similar to situations arising from manufacturing, optimization problems can be identified here that can be addressed using modern metaheuristic approaches.
The objective of the meeting is to give researchers and practitioners the opportunity to discuss recent advances in metaheuristics, in particular with applications in the fast developing service industry.

Call for Papers
We invite papers dealing with metaheuristics, especially with applications in services like e.g. transport, banking, communications, wholesale and retail trade, all professional services such as engineering and medicine, nonprofit economic activity, all consumer services, and all government services, including defense and administration of justice.
Both theoretical articles as well as novel applications of metaheuristics are welcome.
Please submit an extended abstract/short paper using the template. Ideally, the contribution should stay below 10 pages. As this is a workshop, we however expect most contributions to be around 5-6 pages.

Location
The workshop will take place on the campus of the University of Hohenheim in the very south of Stuttgart.
The city of Stuttgart (585,000 inhabitants) lies in the very heart of Europe, in the south west of Germany. Stuttgart is famous for its automotive industry, with headquarters and production facilities of two important car manufacturers, DaimlerChrysler and Porsche. Interesting sightseeing consequently includes the Mercedes Museum and the Porsche Museum.
Besides industrial highlights, Stuttgart is famous for its ballet and the Staatsgalerie, a museum of modern art founded 1843 and extended 1977-1982 following the concept of Sir James Frazer Stirling.
The second biggest sources of mineral water in Europe (after Budapest, Hungary) are located in Bad Cannstatt, since 1905 a suburb of Stuttgart.
More information on the location can e.g. be found under stuttgart-tourist.de or smart travel germany.

As it turns out, the Cannstatter Volksfest, the second largest beer festival (after the Oktoberfest in Munich) will coincidently take place in Stuttgart during the time of the workshop.

Publications
Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. A post-workshop publication of full papers will follow in Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Springer Verlag.

Invited Speakers
1. Stefan Voß, University of Hamburg, Germany
2. Andrzej Jaszkiewicz, Poznan Technical University, Poland

Best Student Paper Awards
We are organizing a best student paper award. Up to three students will be awarded. The total budget for the award is 1500 EUR, kindly sponsored by EURO, the Association of European Operational Research Societies.
Full papers presenting an original contribution with a (PhD) student as first author will be considered. When submitting a paper for EU/ME 2007, please indicate whether you want to have your submission included in the best student paper award. All submissions will undergo a regular review by at least two referees.

Best Student Paper Awards - Latest News:
The Best Student Paper Award has been very competitive indeed. Numerous interesting articles have been received, and we would like to thank everybody who participated.

Two prices have been awarded, 750 EUR each (in alphabetical order):
+ Jens Czogalla, Helmut-Schmidt University Hamburg, Germany: Evolutionary Computation for the Continuous Flow-shop Scheduling Problem (article together with Andreas Fink)
+ Wouter Souffriau, Katholieke Hogeschool Sint-Lieven, Information Technology, Gent, Belgium: A Variable Neighbourhood Descent Metaheuristic for Planning Container Transshipments in a Train Terminal (article together with Pieter Vansteenwegen, Greet Vanden Berghe, Dirk Van Oudheusden)

Congratulations!

Registration fee
Following the tradition of previous EU/MEetings, participation will be free of charge.

Contact
eume2007@uni-hohenheim.de

Download the Call for Papers (pdf)

Co-sponsored by:

Other important events around the EU/MEeting 2007:
HM 2007, the 4th International Workshop on Hybrid Metaheuristics, October 8-9, 2007, Dortmund, Germany