Decision support with Web-enabled software

SAS develops software for building Web-based applications for data management, statistical analysis, forecasting, data mining, and operations research. Our customers have used these tools to build several kinds of Web-based decision-support applications. A Web-based optimization framework is used to solve a large-scale production-and-distribution problem at United Sugars Corporation, to solve an inventory replenishment problem at Cameron and Barkley, and to find optimal portfolios of suppliers using Dun and Bradstreet data. Applications implemented at Dow Corning and the Aeronautics Division of Lockheed Martin make statistical-process-control and project-management data available via the Web. We conclude with a disacussion of Web mining and some of its challenges.