Decision-Support Systems (DSS)

From Pearson, Management Information System: Managing The Digital Firm

DDS focus on problems that are unique and rapidly changing, for which the procedure for arriving at a solution may not be fully predefined in advance.

DDS try to answer questions such as these:

• What would be the impact on production schedules if we were to double sales in the month of December?
• What would happen to our return on investment if a factory schedule were delayed for six months?

Although DDS use internal information from TPS & MIS, they often bring in information from external sources such as current stock prices or product prices of competitors.

DDS employed by 'super-user' managers and business analysts who want to use sophisticated analytics and models to analyze data.

Example of small but interesting & powerful DDS: voyage estimating system.