Decision Support Systems (DSS)
Clint Keller Brandon Stauffer Nigel Menezes
What is a DSS
• Decision Support Systems are a specific class of computerized information system that support decision-making activities. • DSS are interactive computer-based systems and subsystems intended to help decision makers use communications technologies, data, documents, knowledge and/or models to identify and solve problems and make decisions.
Why use a DSS
• Managers need to make decisions from the knowledge available. • DSS help to facilitate this need by formatting data into forms. • Enhances a manager’s ability to work with one or more kinds of knowledge.
Decision Support Systems used by people today
• Cow Culling • Decision Net at Carnegie Mellon University • Tire Selector at Goodyear • Redbrick Software • Quest in Action
Characteristics of a Communication-Driven DSS
• Enables communication between groups of people • Facilitates the sharing of information • Supports collaboration and coordination between people • Supports group decision tasks
Data-Driven DSS
• Access and manipulation internal company data and sometimes external data. • Data warehouse systems that allow the manipulation of data by computerized tools tailored to a specific task and setting.
Document-Driven DSS
• Relatively new field in DSS. • Focused on the retrieval and management of unstructured documents.
• Oral • Written • Video
• Basic web search is a Document-Driven DSS
Knowledge-Driven DSS
• Person-computer systems with specialized problem-solving expertise. • Expertise is knowledge of a particular domain and problems in that domain. • Related Concept is “data mining”
Model-Driven DSS
• Emphasizes access to and manipulation of models.
• Financial • Optimization and Simulation models • Statistical
• Use data and parameters provided by decision makers to aid in analyzing a situation.
Model-Driven DSS cont:
• Not usually Data Intensive. • Large Data Bases are not usually needed for Model-Driven DSS. • Early versions were called Computationally Oriented DSS.