Parallel Sessions Overview
Monday, December 1st
Session N°110:40 – 11:55
Session N°212:10 – 13:25
Session N°315:40 – 16:55
Session N°417:30 – 18:45
Tuesday, December 2nd
Session N°508:30 – 09:45
Session N°610:30 – 11:45
Session N°714:00 – 15:15
Session N°815:30 – 16:45
Wednesday, December 3rd
Session N°908:30 – 09:45
Session N°1010:00 – 11:15
OPTIMA 2025 Conference Program
Sunday, November 30th, 2025
17:30 – 18:30Sun, Nov 30th
Registration and Welcome CoffeePlace: Green Esplanade
18:30 – 19:00Sun, Nov 30th
IFORS 2026 PresentationPlace: Green Esplanade
19:00 – 19:30Sun, Nov 30th
Welcome CocktailPlace: Green Esplanade
Monday, December 1st, 2025
08:30 – 09:00Mon, Dec 1st
Registration and Coffee BreakPlace: Campus Auditorium
09:00 – 09:30Mon, Dec 1st
Opening CeremonyPlace: Campus Auditorium
09:30 – 10:30Mon, Dec 1st
Keynote N°1: Assignment Models for the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Administrative Tasks
Place: Campus AuditoriumPh.D. Héctor Cancela Bosi
Organizations today strive to broaden the diversity of their workforce. In this context, the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the workplace represents both an opportunity to enrich work teams and a way to contribute to institutional social responsibility. At the same time, addressing the personal characteristics of individuals and the specific requirements of different tasks is a significant challenge. In this presentation, we discuss a case study based on an experience carried out with the Municipality of Montevideo, within the framework of hiring interns through agreements with organizations of persons with disabilities, to perform tasks at the Citizen Services Department. The overarching goal of the project was to achieve the best possible placement of individuals in the available positions and assigned tasks.This process involved a physical survey of offices and tasks, identification of necessary adaptations, and the distinction between essential and desirable requirements. It also included an assessment of the abilities, requirements, and preferences of the potential interns. Both a manual assignment and a mathematical programming model were developed, incorporating various objective function variants that enabled the evaluation of solution quality according to different criteria. This approach made it possible to obtain an assignment that considers both the availability and characteristics of the work positions and the abilities, experience, and preferences of the individuals. The results were considered highly satisfactory by all parties involved.
13:40 – 14:30Mon, Dec 1st
LunchPlace: Recreational Area
14:30 – 15:30Mon, Dec 1st
Keynote N°2: Iteratively Executed MCDM with 3-Way Decisions as a Form of Structural Sensitivity Analysis: Introducing 3WD-Based Alternative Filtering Sensitivity (3WD-AFS)
Place: Campus AuditoriumPh.D. Sarfaraz Hashemkhani Zolfani
This presentation introduces a new perspective on decision-making under uncertainty by demonstrating how iteratively executed Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM), combined with 3-Way Decisions (3WD), naturally functions as a form of Structural Sensitivity Analysis. Traditional sensitivity analysis in MCDM typically covers changes in weights, criteria, or input data, but these approaches overlook one fundamental dimension: the sensitivity of the model to changes in the set of alternatives itself. Given the successive elimination of weak alternatives, the changes in the normalization structure, in the pattern of distances, and in ideal solutions are often large.This type of structural reconfiguration can render previously acceptable or deferred alternatives unacceptable, thereby revealing instabilities that are not captured by traditional sensitivity methods. The presentation formalizes this intuition by introducing the new analytical framework of 3WD-Based Alternative Filtering Sensitivity, which captures how alternative elimination influences the geometry and robustness of the decision space. The approach shows that truly strong alternatives remain stable across iterative cycles, while marginal ones are highly volatile. This gives deeper insight to the decision-makers about the resilience, dominance, and reliability of their final choices. Overall, 3WD-AFS offers a powerful new tool for evaluating structural robustness in MCDM models and enhancing transparency, credibility, and interpretability in complex real-world decisions.
17:00 – 17:30Mon, Dec 1st
Coffee BreakPlace: G6 Building (Fifth Floor)
19:00 – 20:10Mon, Dec 1st
Guayacán Bay TourPlace: Campus Dock
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2025
10:00 – 10:30Tue, Dec 2nd
Coffee BreakPlace: G6 Building (Fifth Floor)
12:00 – 13:00Tue, Dec 2nd
Keynote N°3: Bilevel Optimization Approaches for Hierarchical Decisions in Supply Chains
Place: Campus AuditoriumPh.D. José Fernando Camacho Vallejo
Supply chains are complex networks involving multiple stakeholders. In many cases, a central coordinator seeks to optimize a problem according to a specific objective that represents the interests of all stakeholders. However, various situations arise in which it is important to explicitly model the different stakeholders and the relationships among them, particularly when each party makes its own decisions within the network. Frequently, a hierarchy exists among stakeholders. This hierarchical structure may also appear within a single company, where different decision makers control different parts of the system while pursuing their own objective functions.In such settings, a higher-hierarchy decision maker aims to optimize its objective function by choosing decisions that constrain the feasible space available to a lower-hierarchy decision maker; which in turn, seeks to make the best possible decision given its own objective function and the restrictions imposed by the higher-hierarchy decision maker. This hierarchical interaction means that decisions of the lower-hierarchy decision maker influence either the feasible region or the objective function of the higher-hierarchy problem. Bilevel programming models are used to represent and analyze these interdependent decision-making processes.In this presentation, we will discuss the characteristics and challenges of bilevel optimization models, along with common solution approaches, with particular emphasis on metaheuristics. We will also present two illustrative applications of bilevel models in supply chain and logistics settings and highlight promising research directions in this area.
13:00 – 13:10Tue, Dec 2nd
Official Congress PhotoPlace: Campus Auditorium
13:10 – 14:00Tue, Dec 2nd
LunchPlace: Recreational Area
17:00 – 17:30Tue, Dec 2nd
Coffee BreakPlace: G6 Building (Fifth Floor)
17:30 – 18:30Tue, Dec 2nd
Hexaly WorkshopPlace: G6-051 and G6-052
18:30 – 19:30Tue, Dec 2nd
ICHIO AssemblyPlace: G6-054
19:30 – 23:30Tue, Dec 2nd
DinnerPlace: Campus Cafeteria
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025
09:50 – 10:00Wed, Dec 3rd
Coffee BreakPlace: G6 Building (Fifth Floor)
11:30 – 12:30Wed, Dec 3rd
Keynote N°4: Applied Operations Research for Harvest Management: Methods, Models, and Challenges
Place: Campus AuditoriumPh.D. Marcela González Araya
The Chilean fruit sector is highly significant for the national economy and, in recent years, has shown remarkable growth thanks to the opening of new markets and the strengthening of high-demand products such as cherries. However, this growth has also brought new challenges: dealing with labor shortages, the effects of climate change, pressure on water resources, and international competition. These factors have made it clear that modernizing and optimizing the management of the fruit supply chain is essential.Within this supply chain, the harvest stage is particularly critical. It is a seasonal process in which yield and quality can vary significantly. Moreover, each fruit and variety matures at different times, and many orchards combine multiple species, which complicates planning. For large agro-industrial companies, the complexity increases even further as they must coordinate several geographically dispersed orchards simultaneously. Today, many decisions are still made primarily based on experience, which often leads to misalignments and increases fruit losses.This is where Operations Research methods and models play a fundamental role, enabling the transformation of this traditional activity into a far more efficient, flexible, and data-driven process. Through optimization tools, it becomes possible to plan resources, anticipate scenarios, respond to unforeseen changes, and improve the competitiveness of the sector.This talk will present applications of Operations Research that have generated tangible impact in Chilean fruit production. Attendees will learn about the main challenges of harvest planning, understand how mathematical models support complex decision-making, and discover research and development opportunities with high innovation potential. This is an invitation to apply Operations Research where it can make the greatest difference: in the transformation of sectors that are strategic for the country.
12:30 – 13:00Wed, Dec 3rd
Closing CeremonyPlace: Campus Auditorium
13:00 – 13:30Wed, Dec 3rd
LunchPlace: Campus Auditorium
13:30 – 01:00Wed, Dec 3rd
Elqui Valley TourPlace: Campus Auditorium