Developing Spreadsheet-Based Decision Support Systems

A decision support system (DSS) 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 (GUI). This is a comprehensive book that describes how to build decision support systems using the Excel spreadsheet framework and the VBA programming language. Risk Solver Platform for Education, an Excel Add-In, is used for optimization and simulation. This book illustrates complete decision support development applications through several case studies arising in operations research, industrial engineering, management, and business administration.

Changes in the 2nd Edition

Part I - This book features Excel 2010. In Chapter 2 we give an overview of the Ribbon, Quick Access Toolbar and File Menu tab which is a new addition to Excel's interface. In this Chapter we also discuss the new conditional formatting features of Excel. In Chapter 3 we discuss the new and improved charting interface of Excel and introduce Sparklines. In Chapter 4 we discuss some of the improvements made on Excel's function library. In Chapter 6 we present some of the improved capabilities for working with pivot tables and introduce Slicers. In Chapters 8 and 9 we use Risk Solver Platform for Education to model and solve optimization and simulation problems. In Chapter 10 we present the new Official Excel Table tools and discuss its capabilities to organize and manipulate data.

Part II - In Chapters 19 and 20 we discuss how to use Object Oriented API with Risk Solver Platform to modify and solve optimization and simulation models using VBA commands.

Part III - A number of the case studies (such as, Birthday Simulation, Portfolio Management and Optimization, Single and Multi-Server Queuing Simulation, etc.), are updated to use Risk Solver Platform for optimization and simulation.