A visual interactive decision support system to assist the design of a new production unit

Many management problems, including the design of a new production unit, start off being complex and ill-defined. In some cases, such problems may be critical to the survival of the firm but, since these are often unqiue problems, the firm may lack the experience or the people to adequately address the difficult issues involved. This paper describes one methodological approach to handling this type of problem, where the end-result was a simulation model which allowed access to some 300 control variables and parameters, and displayed many different ‘criteria’ in a way that managers in the firm could both understand and use. The core model was a novel type of visual interactive simulation model presented as a decision support system: a visual interactive decision support system.