Developing Spreadsheet-Based Decision Support Systems

A decision support system is an intelligent information system that uses data, models it, processes or analyzes it using problem-specific methodologies, and assists the user in the decision-making process through a graphical user interface.

Developing Spreadsheet-Based Decision Support Systems is a comprehensive book that describes how to build decision support systems using the Excel spreadsheet framework and the VBA programming language. This book illustrates complete decision support development applications through several case studies arising in Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Management, and Business Administration. The main contribution of the book is to present all the techniques needed to build complete Excel-based decision support systems in a highly accessible manner through numerous hands-on examples and case studies. This book is ideally suited as a textbook for teaching undergraduate- and graduate-level courses in any branch of science, engineering, and management and can also be used as a supplementary reference book or a self-study manual. The book contains three parts:

Part I - Excel Essentials:This part presents an overview of Excel basic and extended functionalities. The basic functionality topics include referencing and names, functions and formulas, charts, and pivot tables. The extended functionality topics include statistical analysis, the Solver and modeling, simulation, and working with large datasets.

Part II - VBA for Excel: This part presents an overview of programming in VBA and manipulating Excel objects. Covered topics include macros, programming structures, building user interfaces, and using VBA for optimization and simulation.

Part III - Case Studies: This part presents several case studies of decision support systems arising in different application settings. These case studies include inventory management, retirement planning, reliability analysis, warehouse layout, facility location, forecasting, and portfolio management.

Michelle M.H. Şeref is a researcher at the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Her research focus is in the area of Operations Management with special interests in operations/marketing interface and new product development.

Ravindra K. Ahuja is a Professor in the Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is also the President of Innovative Scheduling, Inc., which specializes in building decision support systems for planning and scheduling problems arising in the field of transportation.

Wayne L. Winston is a Professor in the Kelly School of Business at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has written several widely-used textbooks on spreadsheet modeling, financial models, and operations research.