4Decision Support System

The objective of Decision Support System (DSS) is to support managers in their work, especially decision making.

Decision support system (DSS) tends to overlap both transaction processing systems and office support systems. It acquire much of its data from routine transaction processing and the results of analysis performed on such data may be included in reports prepared by the office support system, for example, word processor or spreadsheet.

Decision support system (DSS) tends to be used in planning, modeling, analyzing alternatives, and decision making.

Decision support system (DSS) are especially useful for semi-structured problems where problem solving is improved by interaction between manager and the computer system. The emphasis is on small, simple models which can easily be understood and used by the manager rather than complex integrated systems which need information specialist to operate them.

What distinguished MIS from a decision support system (DSS) is flexibility. The format and types of information on MIS are predefined, but the format and types of information in decision support system (DSS) are not.

In decision support system (DSS), users are provided with the capabilities to generate their own information usually in their own way.

Structured Decisions	Semi-structured Decisions	Unstructured Decisions
Structured decisions are those which are made according to specified procedures of rules or structured decisions are those that are easily made from a given set of inputs. Deciding to send a reminder notice to a customer for an overdue balance is considered to be structured decision.	Semi-structured decisions are those for which information obtained from a computer system or information system is only a portion of the total knowledge needed to make decision.	Unstructured decisions are novel, and insignificant. There is no cut and dried method for handling the problem because it hasn't arisen before or because it's precise nature and structure are mysterious or complex, or because it so important' that it deserves a custom tailored treatment. These, types of decisions often , involve a high degree of freedom. They may require a lot of creativity and intuitions from the decision maker to tell what factors will come into play in an unstructured play.

A computer base system which is easy to use, that helps decision makers to confront ill-structured problems through direct interaction with data and analysis models.

A decision support system (DSS) might allow a manager to sit at an interactive terminal and browse through data, analyze them and create specially tailored reports rather than consisting of semi-frozen set of data or information's outputs as TPS and MIS do.

The decision support system (DSS) does not make a decision for manager, but provide tools for enhancing user decision making. The objective is to allow the manager to consider a number of alternatives and evaluate them under a variety of potential conditions.

Applications of Decision Support System (DSS):

DSS are men/machine systems and are suitable for semi-structured problems. The problems must be important to the manager and the decision required must be a key one. In addition, if an interactive computer based system is to be used then some of the following criteria should be met.

a. There Should Be A Large Database:

A database is an organized collection of structured data with a minimum duplication of data items. The database is common to all users of the system but is independent of the programs which use the data. If the database is too large for manual searching then a computer supported approach may be worthwhile.

b. Large Amount Of Computation Or Data Manipulation Required:

Where analysis of the problem requires considerable computation or data manipulation, computing power Is likely to be beneficial.

c. Complex Inter-Relationships:

Where there is a large database or where there are numerous factors involved. It is difficult to frequently asses all the possible inter-relationships without computer assistance.

d. Analysis By Stages:

Where the problem is an interactive one with stages for re examination and re-assessment, it becomes more difficult to deal with manually. The computer based model can answer the questions, quickly and effectively.

e. Communication:

Where several people are involved in the problem solving process each contributing some special expertise, then the coordinating power of the computer can be helpful.

It follows from the above criteria that decision support system (DSS) are inappropriate for unstructured problems and unnecessary for completely structure problems, because, these can be dealt with wholly by the men/machine interaction.

Components of Decision Support System (DSS):

AS per the above discussion, DSS is basically the interaction of man and machine.

It means that there are three components of decision support system (DSS).

a. Decision maker (user/manager)

b. Hardware

c. Software

Functions of Decision Support System (DSS) Tools:

In this section we will look at some of the tasks commonly performed by decision support systems.