3.7 Conclusions
Linear programming is a powerful technique for dealing with the problem of allocating limited resources among competing activities as well as other problems having a similar mathematical formulation. It has become a standard tool of great importance for numerous business and industrial organizations. Furthermore, almost any social organization is concerned with allocating resources in some context, and there is a growing recognition of the extremely wide applicability of this technique.
However, not all problems of allocating limited resources can be formulated to fit a linear programming model, even as a reasonable approximation. When one or more of the assumptions of linear programming is violated seriously, it may then be possible to apply another mathematical programming model instead, e.g., the models of integer programming (Chap. 11) or nonlinear programming (Chap. 12).