Book excerpt: Industrial optimization lies on the crossroads between mathematics, computer science, engineering and management. This book presents these fields in interdependence as a conversation between theoretical aspects of mathematics and computer science and the mathematical field of optimization theory at a practical level. The 19 case studies that were conducted by the author in real enterprises in cooperation and co-authorship with some of the leading industrial enterprises, including RWE, Vattenfall, EDF, PetroChina, Vestolit, Sasol, and Hella, illustrate the results that may be reasonably expected from an optimization project in a commercial enterprise. The book is aimed at persons working in industrial facilities as managers or engineers; it is also suitable for university students and their professors as an illustration of how the academic material may be used in real life. It will not make its reader a mathematician but it will help its reader in improving his plant.