A spreadsheet-based decision support system for wood panel manufacturing

Wood paneling manufacturers face a number of complex decisions when trying to allocate production resources and combine various raw materials to meet production goals. While various linear programming formulations fur this pr oblem have been proposed, these models are often difficult to use and maint ain for real-time decision making in a dynamic shop floor environment. This paper describes an MS Excel-based decision support system for wood panel m anufacturing. The system is easy to use and maintain yet gives shop floor p ersonnel access to powerful optimization capabilities useful for fine-tunin g production processes in the face of changing supply and price situations. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.