During the last 10-15 years mathematical programming advanced from an interdisciplinary, problem-oriented approach of "doing things in the best way" to an independent, rigorously developed branch of applied mathematics. This development, that was certainly desirable from the professional standpoint, caused a certain polarization between theoreticians working in a research environment and practitioners in industry. Whereas engineers in the past were actively involved both in the modeling of optimization problems and in the development of suitable algorithms for their solution, this is seldom the case today. Engineers, who have to be familiar with complicated and rapidly changing technologies, cannot simultaneously be experts in modern techniques of mathematical programming. It is, therefore, conceivable that as in other applications of optimization techniques such as production management, or corporate planning, engineering optimization must also be carried out with the aid of mathematical programming specialists. The role of the engineer is then reduced to mainly providing the necessary background material for model formulation and the participating in the solution process by examining and verifying the results.