The challenge of automating the formulation of optimization models is to produce,
from a problem description, a well-formed model, which is a mathematically accurate
representation of the real-world decision-making problem being considered, and
which is suitable for computational purposes. This can be stated more formally as the
automation problem, which is the problem of providing intelligent (i.e. automated)
assistance during the formulation stage of the mathematical programming process. In
this paper, we explore the need to automate model formulation, thus providing a
background on the automation problem. We also detail a solution to the problem
which is based on evolutionary search techniques.