A solid foundation in quantitative methods and management science.   Render/Stair/Hanna puts an emphasis on model building and computer applications to show readers how the techniques presented in the text are used in business. This text’s use of software also allows readers to focus on the managerial problem, while spending less time on the mathematical details of the algorithms.   In the eleventh edition, Excel 2010 has been incorporated throughout the text and an even greater emphasis on modeling is provided.

This text provides an introduction to the most commonly used management science techniques and shows how these tools can be implemented using Microsoft Excel 5.0 for Windows. It also focuses on developing both algebraic and spreadsheet modeling skills.

Written as a business novel, Epiphanized: Integrating Theory of Constraints, Lean and Six Sigma, is an attention-grabbing and fast-paced story of the transformation of Barton Enterprises, a manufacturer of fuel tanks for the aviation and defense industry. Like so many other companies, Barton is struggling to meet customer due dates while eking out a minimal profit margin. Joe Pecci, a process improvement expert, is hired by Barton to change their fate, but Joe soon realizes that the culture and performance metrics in place will make this a difficult thing to do. When Barton's VP of Operations, Sam Henderson, is given an ultimatum to turn Barton around or lose his job, Sam becomes a willing partner for change.Things really begin to change when Joe meets a very unusual, but very clever and talented bartender named Connor Jackson in a bar named Jonahs. Jonahs becomes a regular meeting place and training venue where strategies are developed to transform Barton using some common and not so common improvment tools and principles. One-by-one each of the cast of characters is Epiphanized by their own personal experience.One other central figure in Epiphanized is Becky Chen who has been sent from Corporate to reduce Barton's parts inventory using traditional improvement methods.  However, Becky listens to Connor, Joe and Sam's improvement message and is also Epiphanized.  Becky soon realizes that the traditional improvement methods are not what should be used to accomplish her mission. Together, Connor, Joe, Sam and Becky form a formidible alliance and as the story unfolds, things do change and do so rapidly.Epiphanized is different from other business novels in that the authors, Bruce Nelson and Bob Sproull, have incorporated a very active Appendix for those readers who want more technical know-how and details for how the various improvements tools and principles that are woven into the story line work. Epiphanized also demonstrates the power of combining thinking and improvment tools to form new, more effective thinking tools not yet seen by readers. Epiphanized is a blue print for systems improvement that every company should read and follow.

Russell Ackoff is a very special management thinker. As an architect, city planner, doctor of philosophy, behavioral scientist, trailblazer in the fields of organizational, operations, and systems theory, bestselling author, distinguished Wharton School professor, and head of his own management education and consulting firm, he qualifies, as do few others in this century, for the title of "Renaissance Man." Fortunately, he makes up for this grievous shortcoming by also being an outrageously funny observer of homo commercium. Now, Ackoff's Best offers you an opportunity to become acquainted with this irreverent genius who, over the past forty years, has done so much to shape our understanding of the modern business organization.Compiled by the author, Ackoff's Best encapsulates the author's most controversial, influential, and wittiest work to appear since the 1970s. Ackoff's groundbreaking exploration of systems theory and its effect on business provides the backbone of this collection. Also included are his most lasting and thought-provoking writings on an array of topics in business, society, and human behavior that well reflect the sweeping scope of Ackoff's intellect and expertise. From managing teams, maximizing the effectiveness of information systems, and problem solving, to creativity, crime, and the role of the corporation in a democratic society, these writings are a cornucopia of insights, observations, and powerful lessons that will help you maximize your personal development and the effectiveness of your organization.An excellent introduction for newcomers to Russell Ackoff, and a welcome compendium of Ackoff's pithiest writings for those already familiar with his ideas from such classic works as Creating the Corporate Future and The Art of Problem Solving, Ackoff's Best is required reading for every intelligent businessperson."The range, depth, and perspectives of these essays on management illustrate, once again, Russ Ackoff's unique genius."-Warren Bennis, University Professor, University of Southern California, and Co-author, Co-Leaders"Russ Ackoff uses words that cut through the familiar and open doors in one's brain."-Arie P. de Geus, Author, The Living Company"Ackoff's Best captures the lucid and compelling explorations of one of the most profound and influential thinkers of our time."-Ray Stata, Chairman of the Board, Analog Devices"This collection reminds me that I have learned my most valuable lessons from Russ Ackoff."-Vince Barabba, General Manager, Corporate Strategy and Knowledge Development, General Motors Corporation

Become a savvy Microsoft Excel user. Pivot tables are a great feature in Excel that help you organize and analyze data, but not many Excel users know how to use pivot tables. Pivot Table Data Crunching offers a comprehensive review of all the functionalities of Pivot Tables from author Bill Jelen, otherwise known as Mr. Excel from www.mrexcel.com, and Michael Alexander, a Microsoft Certified Application Developer. The authors' practical scenarios and real-world advice demonstrate the benefits of Pivot Tables and how to avoid the common pitfalls of every day data crunching. Each solution presented in the book can be accomplished with resources available in the Excel interface, making Pivot Table Data Crunching a beneficial resource for all levels of Excel users.

"Performance begins with focusing on outcomes instead of activities. In my experience, most people in most organizations most of the time do the reverse. They concentrate their efforts on the pursuit of activities instead of outcomes. As a result, they rarely set or achieve performance results that matter."Today's performance challenges demand outcomes-both financial and nonfinancial-that must simultaneously benefit customers, shareholders, employees, and management. Therein lies a cycle of sustainable performance that functions as a framework to ensure your organization's goals are set, met, and balanced for today's business world.Make Success Measurable! enables you to avoid activity-based goals that can go on indefinitely, and articulate aggressive outcome-based goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.This is a how-to book, emphasizing outcomes as opposed to actions in setting goals. You'll learn how to: Set goals that matter to customers, shareholders, and funders. Set nonfinancial as well as financial goals and link them together. Understand and use outcome-based goals that support success while avoiding activity-based goals that produce failure. Select and use management disciplines needed to achieve your goals. Smith provides the what's and why's behind today's performance challenges and shows how to convert them into measurable concrete achievements.Using an innovative approach, Smith divides each chapter into an explanatory Mindbook section and a practice Workbook section. The Mindbook sections provide descriptions and explain key concepts, frameworks, tools, and techniques. They seek to build your intellectual understanding of how to set and achieve the performance goals that matter.The Workbook sections include detailed examples and exercises that you and your colleagues can use to practice the concepts, tools, and techniques put forth in the Mindbook section. Workbook exercises allow you to convert understanding into action-and action into results! "Doug Smith's work on performance and measurement has been an invaluable management resource for us. We believe that if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. Thanks to Doug, we can focus on the right measures to drive performance against today's many new and different challenges throughout our enterprise."-Leon Gorman, President, L.L. Bean, Inc."Make Success Measurable! is a practical and powerful step-by-step guide to setting and achieving the goals we all need to accomplish in a constantly changing and challenging world."-Charles Dolan, Chairman, Cablevision Systems Corporation."No one writes as clearly about today's key management issues as Doug Smith. Whether you're in a small eCommerce startup or a large, already established organization, the frameworks, tools, techniques, and exercises contained in this book are the only things you'll need to manage the performance that matters to your customers, your people, and your shareholders."-Steve Goldstein, CEO, eChores and former CEO, American Express Bank."Achieving results that matter-to donors and clients-is the true measure of success for any nonprofit organization. This book provides a thoughtful and extremely practical guide for setting goals and effectively meeting them. It is an absolutely indispensable tool for leaders and a model for good management."-Jenna Dorn, President, National Museum of Health.

This text focuses on developing a smooth interface between the mathematical modeling and the spreadsheet modeling approaches. Contemporary Management Science with Spreadsheets offers flexibility in its content with only 10 chapters.

Easy to understand-even for learners with limited math backgrounds, this book uses a modeling approach to provide thorough coverage of the basic techniques in quantitative methods and focuses on the managerial applications of these techniques. An interesting and reader friendly writing style makes for a clear presentation, complete with all the necessary assumptions and mathematical details. Chapter topics include probability concepts and applications, decision models and decision trees, regression models, forecasting, inventory control models, linear programming modeling applications and computer analyses, network models, project management, simulation modeling, and more. For an introduction toquantitative analysis, quantitative management, operations research, or management science-especially for those individuals preparing for work in agricultural economics and health care fields.

This book is a must-read for any company who has not completely reinvented itself since the Internet exploded onto the business world a few years ago. --Alan Taetle, Former Executive Vice President of MindSpring and General Partner of the Venture Capital Firm, Noro-Moseley PartnersThis is the first book on e-business to combine a clarity of vision that will help you to appreciate the true significance of e-business, with a rigorous roadmap for reinventing your business design. If you want to avoid being blindsided by your competition, you must make this book required reading in your organization. --Mohanbir Sawhney, Tribune Professor of Electronic Commerce and Technology, Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University As e-commerce solutions, enterprise applications, and business models converge in new ways, a tidal wave of change is transforming industries, redefining competitive strategies, and annihilating traditional thinking.To survive and thrive in the e-commerce world, all companies--from established industry leaders to feisty upstarts--are remaking themselves into lean, mean e-business machines that serve, delight, and retain customers better than ever before. How do they do it? Not with new products or innovative technology, but with superior e-business designs. Startups like Amazon.com and some nimble incumbents, such as Cisco, have each created an e-business design by which they serve customers, differentiate their supply chains, integrate their selling chains, procure products, and nurture relationships. e-Business: Roadmap for Success illustrates how managers are rewiring the enterprise to confront the e-commerce onslaught--uprooting traditional business applications as we know them. The authors create an innovative application framework for structural migration from a legacy model to an e-business model. Drawing on their experience with and research of leading businesses, Kalakota and Robinson identify the fundamental design principles for building the e-business blueprint. 0201604809B04062001

(Now available from Productivity Press, Cambridge, Mass.) Useful as both a text and a working resource, this volume contains 36 chapters (and 4 appendixes) illustrating the application of system dynamics to overall strategic planning and managerial problem-solving in the corporate functional areas of manufacturing, marketing and distribution, research and development, and finance and control. In addition, a final section treats the systems analysis of societal problems that impinge on a manager's social responsibilities. Many of the chapters provide full descriptions of the modeling processes and implemented results, and in nine cases the computer models are completely documented with listings of the model equations. This book is the first attempt to compile real managerial uses of the system dynamics approach, and the first volume since Forrester's Industrial Dynamics (MIT Press, 1961) to focus upon corporate system dynamics models. In draft form the book has been used as the basis for teaching system dynamics in the Sloan School's regular graduate programs and its middle-management executive development programs. In his introductory chapter on the concepts, philosophy, and methodology of system dynamics, the editor clearly identifies the underlying premises: "The system dynamics philosophy rests on a belief that the behavior (or time history) of an organization is principally caused by the organization's structure. The structure includes not only the physical aspects of plant and production process but, more importantly, the policies and traditions, both tangible and intangible, that dominate decision-making in the organization. Such a structural framework contains sources of amplification, time lags, and information feedback similar to those found in complex engineering systems. Engineering and management systems containing these characteristics display complicated response patterns to relatively simple system or input changes.... The subtleties and complexities in the management area make these problems even more severe. Here the structural orientation of system dynamics provides a beginning for replacing confusion with order. A second aspect of the system dynamics philosophy is the concept that organizations are viewed most effectively in terms of their common underlying flows instead of in terms of separate functions.... A meaningful system framework results from tracing cause-and-effect chains through the relevant flow paths." The book is included in the MIT Press/Wright-Allen Series in System Dynamics, of which Jay W. Forrester is general editor. System dynamics as a methodology was largely devised by Forrester, Roberts, and other MIT faculty and staff. It employs computers to predict short- and long-term consequences of social, economic, and corporate policies, and has been used variously to chart the growth of new products in business, to study environmental change, and to examine the impact of public policies at scales ranging from the urban to the global. Professor Roberts' four prior books on system dynamics cover a similar range of theory and application of systems and computer modeling concepts.