Types Of Decision Support Research Articles

Decision support for material planners

Abstract Control parameters, such as order frequency, safety stock and safety time, are important tools to improve the logistic performance in material planning. In practice, the adjustment of control parameters appears to be very difficult. One of the reasons is the lack of relevant tactical control information: a simple, periodical and per-commodity integrated feedback of performance and process information often is not available to the logistic operator. Therefore, the material planner is offered a fairly limited overview and insight of the processes to be controlled. This problem has been investigated in several plants in the Netherlands. A solution to this problem is first to measure the performance, the frequency of process disturbances and the effect of the parameters on performance for all commodities involved. And second, to integrate this information and provide feedback to the responsible material planner. In this article a design for decision support is presented to integrate and give feedback of relevant tactical control information. Prototype information systems are now being tested in practice and in the laboratory. The expectation is that this type of decision support will help the operator to make more systematic and effective diagnoses.

Computer systems that enhance the productivity of public-sector planners

Policy Support Systems (PSS) for regional and national planning of public policy are intelligent software systems, that can be viewed as special Decision Support Systems (DSS). They are tailored to the practical needs of policy-makers and serve to enhance the quality of their work and their productivity. In this article a systematic analysis is made of the endogenous and exogenous constraints on the Policy Making Process (PMP), as also of the endogenous and exogenous threats to the PMP. The rationale for PSS is they will enhance the opportunities for a PMP that is more rational and more verifiable, by taking into account such constraints and threats. Thus they will bring about a higher quality and productivity of public policies, which means that these will better cater for the interests of Society. In this article we focus on the following issues: What should intelligent DSS be like? Why is there a need for PSS? In which respects are PSS different from other DSS? What types of decision support should the...