Proceedings of the 84th European Study Group Mathematics with Industry (SWI 2012), Eindhoven, January 30 - February 3, 2012

Introduction There are a few welldefined moments when mathematicians can get in contact with relevant unsolved problems proposed by the industry. One such a moment is the socalled "Study Group". The concept of the Study Group is rather simple and quite efficient: A group of mathematicians (of very different expertise) work together for one week. As a rule, on a Monday the industrial problems are presented by their owners, then few research groups selforganize around the proposed problems and work intensively until Friday, when the main findings are presented. The insight obtained via mathematical modeling together with the transfer of suitable mathematical technology usually lead the groups to adequate approximate solutions. As a direct consequence of this fact, the problem owners often decide to benefit more from such knowledge transfer and suggest related followup projects. In the period January 31– February 3, 2012, it was the turn of the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Eindhoven University of Technology to organize and to host the "Studiegroep Wiskunde met de Industrie/Study Group Mathematics with the Industry" (shortly: SWI 2012, but also referred to as ESG 84, or as the 84th European Study Group with Industry). This was the occasion when about 80 mathematicians enjoyed working on six problems. Most of the participants were coming from a Dutch university, while a few were from abroad (e.g. from UK, Germany, France, India, Russia, Georgia, Turkey, India, and Sri Lanka). The open industrial problems were proposed by Endinet, Philips Lighting, Thales, Marin, Tata Steel, and Bartels Engineering. Their solutions are shown in this proceedings. They combine ingenious mathematical modeling with specific mathematical tools like geometric algorithms, combinatorial optimization of networks, identification of parameters and model structures, probability theory, and statistical data analysis. It is worth mentioning that this scientific proceedings is accompanied by a popular proceedings, written by Ionica Smeets, containing layman’s descriptions of the proposed problems and of the corresponding results.