Improved OR education through the use of spreadsheet models

The first and major part of this presentation shows how OR education may be improved through the use of spreadsheets, with several examples: (1) in decision theory, where the drawing capabilities of Excel are used to represent decision trees and where window switching and macros allow the educator to animate his presentation; (2) in linear programming, where the solver is used (remarks are made relating to the adequacy of the solver's solutions), and where the spreadsheet's graphing capabilities are used both to represent the feasible set and the objective function, and to interactively animate the objective function or constraint movements; (3) in dynamic programming, deterministic or stochastic, where it is shown that several standard spreadsheet functions facilitate the development of specialized models; (4) in simulation, where it will be seen how stochastic simulation may be facilitated through the use of an add-in, and how a decision support system may thus be built from scratch in less than 10 minutes. A creative use of the spreadsheet in business OR models is presented in the second part of this presentation, with an example in process simulation: airport luggage traffic simulation. A short third part presents the possibilities offered by spreadsheet add-ins.