[Iefac.list] Announcing the Second Edition of the Book, "Developing Spreadsheet-Based Decision Support Systems," by Ekşioğlu/Şeref/Ahuja/Winston.

[Sandra D. Eksioglu]

Dear Colleagues,

 

As you may know, in 2007 we published a textbook entitled "Developing Spreadsheet-Based Decision Support Systems." We are pleased to announce that the 2nd edition of the textbook which has just been published:

 

Developing Spreadsheet-Based Decision Support Systems, 2nd Edition by Ekşioğlu/Şeref/Ahuja/Winston

 

This textbook teaches students how to use Excel features and VBA programming to develop complete decision support systems (DSS). The textbook has three parts: Part I - Excel Essentials, Part II - VBA for Excel, and Part III - Case Studies. In the second edition of the book, we have maintained the same structure, but have made some major changes to the content of the first edition. First, this textbook uses Excel 2010. We discuss Excel's new interfaces and functionalities that have been added in this version. For example, we discuss Excel's improved charting interface and introduce Sparklines, the improved function library, the improved capabilities for working with pivot tables and introduce Slicers, etc. Second, we use Risk Solver Platform (RSP) for Education to model and solve optimization and simulation problems. The discussion of RSP in both the Excel and VBA parts of our book adds tremendous value to students who may be developing decision support systems using simulation or optimization. We show how to use Object Oriented API with RSP to modify and solve optimization and simulation models using VBA commands. A number of the case studies we present in the book have been updated to use RSP, which has improved coding efficiency and performance of these case studies.     

 

With these changes, we have kept true to our initiative to bring greater levels of information technology (IT) skills to the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IE/OR) curriculum. The first edition of the textbook has been used by over 25 Universities worldwide in teaching courses and most of these courses are required courses in the curriculum. Students who have completed these courses have told us that these courses were among the most useful courses in their workplace. The skills they acquired are extensively used by them in their day-to-day tasks. You may well be aware that Data Analytics or Business Analytics is becoming an important area in the workplace and INFORMS is greatly promoting this area of study; for example, INFORMS just renamed its "Practice Meeting" to "Analytics Meeting." This book is all about analytics; it teaches how to do simple analytics using Excel and how to do advanced analytics using Excel VBA.  

 

We hope that you will adopt this textbook in case that you are already offering an analytics course, or consider offering such a course in your department, or use the book in your day-to-day practice.  In case you are interested in offering a course on this topic, we have prepared extensive teaching material for you including PowerPoint Presentations, Student Team Projects, and the Solution Manual. This material (except the Solution Manual) is available at the book website www.dssbooks.com <http://www.dssbooks.com/> . If you need copies of these books, they are available at www.amazon.com <http://www.amazon.com/>  or at the publisher's website: www.dynamic-ideas.com <http://www.dynamic-ideas.com/> . 

 

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, feel free to email to Sandra (sde47 at ise.msstate.edu). We look forward to hearing from you.  

                                                              

Best regards,     

 

Sandra D. Ekşioğlu                         Michelle M.H. Şeref                          Ravindra K. Ahuja               Wayne L. Winston

Mississippi State University      Virginia Institute of Technology    University of Florida          Indiana University

sde47 at ise.msstate.edu            mmhseref at vt.edu                            ahuja at ufl.edu                    winston at indiana.edu 

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