New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)
Computer and Information Science Department (CIS)
CIS677: Information System Principles
Professor: Michael Bieber

CIS677 - Notes for Lecture 3 - Professor Bieber
Decision Making/Decision Support

Introduction

Guest: Jerry Fjermestad, Associate Professor, School of Management - NJIT (jerry.l.fjermestad@njit.edu)

 

Where DM/DSS fits in frameworks

- Organizational Pyramid

- G. A. Gorry & M. Scott Morton, "A Framework for MIS, Sloan Management Review, 13:1, Fall 1971, 55-70.

- Alter's Work-Centered Analysis

 

Simon's Intelligence - Design - Choice Model of Decision Making

 

Decision Process Life Cycle (DPLC)

Dimension 1: "Decision Process Life Cycle"

  1. search (directed/undirected search of your domain)
  2. analysis (historical analyses / analyzing formal studies)
  3. problem formulation
  4. design (potential solutions)
  5. choice
  6. ratification (getting consensus of those affected or in charge)
  7. implementation (execution, control, coordination)
  8. documentation (flowchart, decision tree, pseudo code {if then's...})
  9. feedback (evaluating consequences, determining quality of decision and the process)

Dimension 2: "Individual vs. Group DSS"

 

Group DSS

 

Regarding Anonymity Mark S. states:

Anonymity is advantageous in that it takes the person's ego out of the equation. If someone doesn't think it's a good idea then it doesn't reflect badly on you because he doesn't know it's you.

 

Regarding evaluating individual participants when groups work together, Susan asks:

- How do you evaluate an individual's contribution?

- Who gets promoted first?

 

Regarding Jerry's comment "everyone knows who contributes to a group", Bob S. notes:

It gets very complicated, especially in the global economy when teams actually cross boundaries so teams, are not just local to one regional company they actually are from foreign countries all over the world, so computer companies have teamware world-wide. Many of these teams actually are not just based in one country. Take Ford for example, where design teams come from across Germany…

 

Regarding GDSS, Bob S. notes:

Also, the pressure is not on one individual to get the job done. The workload [is going to be distributed across the entire group]…

 

Example

Let's say we have a company that sells rain gear, but is losing sales.

Intelligence

Choice

- Heuristics - Rules of Thumb

- Simon's Bounded Rationality Theory

- "Satisficing": picking the best alternative of those available

 

2 Models of Decision Makers:

- normative or rational decision maker

- administrative model of a decision maker (Simon)

 

Highly Structured Example

- deciding when to reorder inventory

 

Regarding highly structured decisions - Angel G. notes:

It's very obvious when you look at … warehouses, there is no decision making there at the management level. Everything is all done by point-of-sale to keep track of what's sold and what's not sold and it automatically orders and all they just have to wait until it comes in to keep inventory stocked at all times… And that eliminates whole management making decisions like that.

 

Mark C.asks:

Over the last 9 months there has been a new concept has come out called mass customization. How does that impact the DSS that Jerry's been talking about? (Definition: Mass Customization: producing massive quantities of individually customized items for the global market.)

 

Angel G. asks:
You're producing very quickly a Guild system (like in the middle ages), for mass production quantity. Again, how will that impact DSS that are geared to produce mass quantities of like products?

 

Mark C. continues:
What triggered my thought on mass customization and DSS is what Jerry said which was just-in-time. For me the impact would be just-in-time over and over every hour, trying to calculate just-in-time all of your inventory stores, your customers, your vendors. Boy, that would be a horrendous tax on DSS.

 

Regarding the sophistication of software enabling unstructured decisions to become structured and automated, Mark S. notes:
It sounds like that could be accomplished by having an interface between your ordering system and your inventory control system. Like let's say you could produce cans in gold and silver and red, and you don't know how they are going to order. And all of a sudden everyone starts ordering the red ones. The interface between the inventory control system says that now you need to raise the order point for red.

 

Mark C. answers:
You're now interested in the containers but let's say the contents, where the prices of the contents … and you're trying to optimize ….

 

Prof. Bieber Asks:
Should a DSS help decision makers who are not rational, support people in their preferred decision-making style?

 

Regarding supporting the rational decision maker, Bob S. asks:
We're talking about the rational decision making process. Who establishes what is rational and what is not. …. Maybe what's Rational for one DSS is not for another DSS.

 

Quality Decision Making

Decision makers should, to the best of their abilities:

  1. thoroughly check a wide range of alternatives
  2. gathers full range of goals and implications of choices
  3. weighs costs and risks of both positive and negative consequences
  4. Intensively search for new information for evaluating alternatives
  5. take all new information into account, even when it doesn't support initial course of action
  6. reexamine positive and negative consequences of all alternatives, including initially rejected ones
  7. make detailed provisions for implementation, including contingency plans for known risks

 

Note

At one point Prof. Fjermestad notes that there is a full course on DSS in NJIT's School of Management. Note that the CIS Department also offers a Decision Analysis course.

last updated: 1/28/2000

This page: http://www.cis.njit.edu/~bieber/CIS677/lecture-notes/lecture3.html