Acknowledgements and Conclusion on the Challenge 1999

This challenge was organized on the one hand to strengthen existing links between industrial and research partners and on the other hand to offer an opportunity to young reseachers to work on an industrial problem with its requirements and real data.The number of participating teams (13 : 7 Turkish, 4 French, 1 Italian and 1 Brazilian; among these teams, 9 sent their results for the final round), the quality of the results obtained by the finalists and the enthusiam for the challenge shown by the industrial and research partners during the ROADEF'99 Conference make me believe that the initial goals have been achieved.

The organizers of the next ROADEF'2000 congress organizers (École des Mines de Nantes) have expressed their willingness to host another challenge.

Thus, we are now looking for a new industrial problem for the next challenge. Just feel free to contact the challenge organizer if you have any proposal.

My sincere thanks to BOUYGUES (Tibor KÖKENY, François LABURTHE, Benoit ROTTEMBOURG et Yves CASEAU) and Euro-Décision (Eric JACQUET-LAGRÈZE and Denis MONTAUT) companies, and the Chic-2 project who have made this challenge a reality. In particular, Tibor KÖKENY who has been my priviledged contact during the challenge and a great help for analyzing the results of the participants.

Thanks go also to the scientific book store LE MONDE EN TIQUE and the French OR Society ROADEF (Xavier GANDIBLEUX, Marie-Claude PORTMANN et Laura WYNTER) who have supported this initiative since the beginning, without forgetting the members of the Jury (Thierry MAUTOR et Philippe MICHELON) as well as the people who have helped to improve these pages.

At last but not at least, all my thanks go to the particpants of this challenge and in particular to the ROADEF'99 local organizers for having reserved a very special place for this challenge during the conference.

Looking forwad to seeing you at the ROADEF'2000 challenge...