Decision Support Systems for the Higher Managerial Tasks

Abstract

In this paper we describe a number of decision support systems which have been developed in Manchester to help senior managers to tackle important Decision Making problems. The systems deal with both the strategic and the operational decision making levels. Real Life Examples are also given of the use of these systems in different industries (e.g. Retailing, Manufacturing, Transportation and Financial Services) based on work done with European companies in these areas. The systems which are described in the paper could be classed as Hybrid Knowledge Based Systems where managerial intuition is extracted, combined with “hard” data and then a mathematically based inference engine (using optimisation, game theory etc.) is used to recommend a decision based on a particular set of assumptions. The systems also allow the managers to see the impact of changing some of these assumptions on the recommended decisions. The systems also provide the facility of changing/updating the Knowledge Base of the system in the light of new information or new managerial perceptions. All the systems run on IBM personal computers or PC compatible machines with a hard disk. The systems which are described in the paper are Resource-opt (A resource allocation systems), Price-Strat (A system for competitive pricing), Mark-opt (for competitive decision making by manufacturers) and Pharipplan (a business game for the pharmaceutical industry).