The scientific monograph of a survey kind presented to the reader's attention deals with fundamental ideas and basic schemes of optimization methods that can be effectively used for solving strategic planning and operations manage- ment problems related, in particular, to transportation. This monograph is an English translation of a considerable part of the author's book with a similar title that was published in Russian in 1992. The material of the monograph embraces methods of linear and nonlinear programming; nonsmooth and nonconvex optimization; integer programming, solving problems on graphs, and solving problems with mixed variables; rout- ing, scheduling, solving network flow problems, and solving the transportation problem; stochastic programming, multicriteria optimization, game theory, and optimization on fuzzy sets and under fuzzy goals; optimal control of systems described by ordinary differential equations, partial differential equations, gen- eralized differential equations (differential inclusions), and functional equations with a variable that can assume only discrete values; and some other methods that are based on or adjoin to the listed ones.