Lassignació

L'assignació, written in Catalan as l'assignació, refers to the act or process of designating and distributing resources, tasks, or values among alternatives. The term is used in multiple disciplines to describe how limited means are allocated, how duties are assigned to people, or how data and values are assigned within systems. In everyday usage, it covers both the allocation of tangible resources, such as funds or materials, and intangible assignments, such as responsibilities or permissions.

Originating from Latin assignatio and the verb assignar, l'assignació entered Catalan through historical usage of assignment in law, administration, and commerce. In written Catalan, the elided form l'assignació is standard before vowels.

In economics and public administration, l'assignació describes how scarce resources — capital, time, labor — are distributed among competing activities or sectors. Allocation policies aim to balance efficiency, equity, and strategic goals, and are analyzed with tools such as budget planning, cost-benefit analysis, and impact assessment.

In operations research, the assignment problem seeks the most cost-effective pairing between two sets, typically workers and tasks, under constraints; it is commonly solved with the Hungarian algorithm. In computing, the term is used for two related ideas: assignment of a value to a variable and memory allocation, where resources are reserved for program use.

Thus, l'assignació encompasses a broad family of processes that govern how resources and roles are distributed in organizations, systems, and algorithms.