Management Science and Operations Research

This book is meant to give a good working knowledge of mathematical techniques available to model, solve and analyze real-world problems on spreadsheets that may arise in a work environment. Using this approach students have an easier time seeing the relevance of management science in the business world. The electronic spreadsheet has become the standard tool used to build models and analyze quantitative problems. This book incorporates all of the traditional management science topics taught today, but uses an electronic spreadsheet as a visual platform. The approach is centered on problem solving rather than learning mathematics or theory. It emphasizes both problem finding and formulation as managerial modeling and then uses the spreadsheet to layout the model on templates provided to the student to solve the problem. Students will then lead to the analysis of the results by performing "what-if" analysis-which is uniquely well matched to the spreadsheet approach. This allows them to get a feel for each type of model and what it can accomplish without getting confused with the math.