Object Oriented Mathematical Programming

Object oriented design (OOD) and development revolutionized computer science in 1990s and since then the methodology has been adapted in several other disciplines simply because it provides a natural and intuitive approach to model and decompose complex systems. Concurrently, in the industry there has been an emergence of interest in optimization suites which have then become more powerful and efficient thanks to advances in both theory and computational technology. This study contributes not only to the literature by proposing a new mathematical modeling paradigm based on OOD to ease modeling of complex optimization systems but also to the industry by designing and implementing an optimization suite as the proof-of-concept. In addition to its unique hierarchical architecture and visual syntax, the core strength of this tool is in bringing the intuitiveness of OOD to the modeling phase of optimization problems without requiring the user to write programming code. In the context of the new paradigm, both traditional and contemporary optimization suites are analyzed in comparison to the new tool. Two cases studies using this tool, including a real life problem, are also presented.