This paper presents an actual experience in implementing an Operations Research model to allocate referees to assess papers submitted to a large size congress. By means of the actual data from XV ENEGEP (National Congress of Production Engineering), it was demonstrated the great superiority of the computerized method against the method (empirical and manual) utilized. In the following congress (XVI ENEGEP III ICIE) the model made the allocation of 403 referees to assess 954 papers. The model was absolutely validated and some inaccuracies that occurred were due to the information not absolutely correct about some referees. It is also presented the usage of this model in the XXI ENEGEP's assessment process of papers related to Management area. At the conclusions, it is drawn some considerations that intend contribute to the improvement of the assessment process in future congresses. There is no doubt that the process of assessment papers is one of the most critical processes in the organization of a large size congress.
allocation of referees; congress organization; modeling language; mathematical optimization; resources allocation; zero-one linear programming; binary linear programming