A Decision Support System for Planning Sales, Production, and Plant Addition with Manager: A Computer Simulation

Abstract

This paper introduces a decision support tool for use with the simulation ‘MANAGER: A Simulation’ (Smith & Golden, 1997). The spreadsheet presented here is intended to supplement the worksheet provided by the authors of the simulation by analyzing factors that impact three important forecasts for firms operating in this simulated environment - sales, production, and plant size. After repeated use of this tool, decision makers become more comfortable forecasting sales and more knowledgeable about the relationship between projected sales and production as well as between production levels and planning for plant expansion.