Improving competitiveness in veneers production by a simple-to-use Decision Support System

Based on work done within a case study from the production of veneers, the article proposes a pragmatic approach to the development of managerial decision support systems (DSSs) that leads to more efficient implementation and simpler use of such systems. The proposed approach is illustrated by a simple prototype DSS for solving the specific cutting stock problem from the production of veneers. In this sense, the purpose of the study was to check whether a simple-to-use managerial DSS can be developed efficiently for users lacking detailed operations research (OR) knowledge, starting from available commercial mathematical programming software. After selecting the locally most convenient OR package, the main emphasis of the study was put into developing an appropriate user-friendly graphical interface. Results of the study show that the approach is very promising, particularly for small and medium-size organizations. It is proposed to make further case studies in different enterprise settings, in order to collect enough experience for elaborating detailed guidelines for applying the proposed approach in other decision support situations.