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Quantitative methods for business decisions: Text and cases
Book Rt vlcws
(9) Personnel and Administration (7 chapters), (IO) Safegaarding the Facility (2 chapters). While there ts a degree of overlap between some of the sections, each gives, to a greater or lesser degree. a worthwhile compendium of informatic, n on tl'e subject with which it purports to ueal. In assen:t, ling and correlating such a mass o f materials the Editor is to be congratulated. Of course, the approach and level o f detail inevitably v tries - flora on the one hand for example, checklists o f points to bear in mind in conducting so called 'exit interviews" to, on the other, a fairly detailed example o f the application of the FAST tee!.nique in Value Analysis. One is wary o f the 'cookbook' approach adopted q,t~litatively m a number o f chapters but generally speaking, it ~s done without too much rigidity and supported by reasons for particular procedures. Furthermore one gets a distinct impression that the various authors speak from experience and are not merely rehashing existing text book material. There should, therefore, be few traps for the intelligent reader and ~ith reasonable care he should find much m the text to adopt, advantageously, to his particular needs. It is in the chapters which use a more quantitative approach that some reservations must be made and this reviewer would have been happier to see a greater awareness conveyed to the reader o f some o f the pitfalls in using mathematical and statistical techniques (especial b the apparently simple ones!). What would also l'tave been welcomed is a stronger indication in several chapter, o f where and when the ~rvices o f a specialist shoulc~ be sought. This seems .~specially true o f the services of the various Manage• -rent Services specialists. In fact, with one exception • , e Manag,:ment Services functions get sparse a,~d passing mention, OR for example beirg mentioned once briefly under the heading of Automad~ Data Prc,:essing Applications and once under the heading of More Sophisticated Computerised Decision Making'. The latter reference (which does not appear in the Index) does indicate some areas m which OR r is been successful but as implied by tk,e headings bo h references suggest that OR is above all a enrapt. "or activity. The use o f Computers and Computer Sys, -ms is the exceptiat, al area of Manag*ment Servi, *s which does get more extended treatment in several :hapters but even in the comparatively short time sint2 the text must have been written some topics are already beginning to wear a dated look.
3'$ 7
The very fact that the vohmre is ~,~'~,:it~calIy intended f~r Plant Et:gineers mean.; that certain topic',, are not covered but one or two of the missions .are surprising. CPM/FERT techniques, although mentinned several times. :ire heated very briet'iy, and while the physical storage of p:~r~s and purchasit~g methods are discussed there is almost nothing on the principles o f stock control. Again the techniques useful in plant layout and materials handEng are hardly touched upon. Nevertheless, in a work o f this size, these points o," criticism are far outweighed by the good features and it should prove a great help to the young engineer of bin.ted management experience as well as to some of his superiors. Apart from a few area3 of specifically US practice or legal requirement most of the contents can be ~sed as a direct guide or as a touchstone on which to test his current practice. For the OR professional, tire book is also of value especially it" he is working in the Engineering field and while he might not wish to expend a fair sum on buying it himself, he could do a great deal worse than to borrow it from the Engineering Library. The book is well produced and laid out and has a reasonable if not cornprehensive Index. This reviewer found the page numbering system somewhat irritating and he would have welcomed a large type face but :Iris presumably would have increased the cost considerably. llywe1114. REES British Steel Corporation Swansea, U.K.
Barry SttORE Quantitative Methods for Business Decisions: ~-e~t and Cases McGraw-Hill, Diisseldorf, x + 4~5 pages, DM .t6 ~0 This book provides some interesting materia ~ : an introdu, tory non-specialist course Jn Ouanti i'~ ,e Methods: that is. those elementary part.~ ,:f O k ' ~ta,istics deemed suitable tbr widespread o~'n-n .¢. it might :also possibly be looked at by teachers o," OR ,,s an example of a well-worked out way of s*ructuring teaching material. The author tnotisa'e ~, each of 15 "techniques" chapters by a ~.hort story showing how issues in a snippet el human enterprise lead on to models being drawn out. Each chapter t.en aims to give the student some elementary com-
348
B~ok Renews
petence, and after a set of shorter exercises invites him to tackle one, and sometime~ severn,, 2/3 page "cases", which fairly evidently call for a particular kind of simple model but which also call for reflection on how the model is to ~e structured and used. The topics are standard but freshly handled and with evident thougt,t on how ideas are to develop and be made menmrable. Chapters 2 - 6 cover proba"'ility, decisions under risk and uncertainty, revision of probabilities, and decision trees. Chapters 7 - I 0 cover formulation and solution of linear programming and transportvtion models. Chapters 11-16 cover inventory, qu2uing, simulation, networks and Markov models. Chapters 1, 17 and 18, true to the general style, use short stories to motivate the OR/ Sys'ems a?proaeh, discuss its place in the organisatio,t, and to introduce the cole and use of computers. By the end .~f the text, a student is likely to feel justifiably confident in doing a variety of simple things for hi~self. He will have the beginnings of a critical view about own-use models, and will perhaps have a little insight into the problems of exploring the properties of abstract systems. He will. however, have some blind spots. The chapter on queues is rather misjudged: it fails to convey any feel for the Poisson process, and fails to convey any feel for exponential service times and their very doubtful applicobilit y. More generally, a student is likely to expect models to pop up more easily than they do and data to he more readily available than it is. The lack of references to follow-up reading means that, despite the care taken with the stories and with the advice of Chapters t7 and 18, the student is stil', likely to have too httle feel for what the ~pecialist otfers to be a reliable negotiator at the client/special st interface. But the book is clearly sul:erior to the usual QM. text. H. BOOTttROYD
Robert GOODELL BROWN Materials Management Systems: A Modular Library Wiley, Chichester. 1977. xii + ,~36 pages, £17.30 This is a most unu~:tal book. During the course .~f his consuitancy worI, l',~ many Am:; ~..... ~nd European corporations and government agencies dus prolific author has developed a large suite of computer pro-
grams that are being used to control the flow of their materials. Here is a guide to the output produced by this library of programs; approximately 120 examples of their output are presented and explained. However, this is more than a users guide: it acts as a reference manual to the principles underlying the algorithms that have been implemented in the plograms. Tl'e author aims to present the fundamental structure of a materials management control system, with a range of options available in each part. As such it can be highly recommended. The first section, an overview, setting the framework for the other sections, deals with the four main parts of a materials management system: the action system, which produces instructions about what to make, what to pack and what to ship: the planning system, to ensure that the right materials are available at the right time to meet requirements; the requirements system, to forecast requirements; the strategy system, to set stock targets. The structure of the progcam library allows modules of these systems t:~ be mixed and combined at will, like building ¢.'Hh [.,ego. Section 2, dealing with the forecasting of reqairements, recommends a combination of statisti:al forecasting and marketing intelligence. Practical topics such as screening for outliers, introducing new items into the system and revising the forecast are covered, in addition to the usual technical material. "The proper measure of forecast error is the standard deviation rather than the mean ~bsolute deviation that has been popularised by IBM and its imitators" The decision rules, the management policy variables and the balances between running and capital costs that are possible are discussed in section 3 'h:ventory Management', whilst in section 4 methods of time-phased, net-requirements materials planning are presented. These two sections are the heart of the book and form an excellent introduction to these subjects. The final section deals with complete materials management systems, with special emphasis on the neglected area el" the management of stocks in distribution system~, t:t~r instance, procedures for replenishing stocks in depots are described. The book is full ot the author's wise comments and pungent advice. One anecdote will boost the ego of some of this journal's readers. Brown presented a proposal for an OR course to the Aeronautical Fngineedng Department faculty at the University of Michigan. At the end a senior professor ~nd 'Mr. Brown ... it" I understand what you are proposing ... you are suggesting a course ... in how to think'.
(9) Personnel and Administration (7 chapters), (IO) Safegaarding the Facility (2 chapters). While there ts a degree of overlap between some of the sections, each gives, to a greater or lesser degree. a worthwhile compendium of informatic, n on tl'e subject with which it purports to ueal. In assen:t, ling and correlating such a mass o f materials the Editor is to be congratulated. Of course, the approach and level o f detail inevitably v tries - flora on the one hand for example, checklists o f points to bear in mind in conducting so called 'exit interviews" to, on the other, a fairly detailed example o f the application of the FAST tee!.nique in Value Analysis. One is wary o f the 'cookbook' approach adopted q,t~litatively m a number o f chapters but generally speaking, it ~s done without too much rigidity and supported by reasons for particular procedures. Furthermore one gets a distinct impression that the various authors speak from experience and are not merely rehashing existing text book material. There should, therefore, be few traps for the intelligent reader and ~ith reasonable care he should find much m the text to adopt, advantageously, to his particular needs. It is in the chapters which use a more quantitative approach that some reservations must be made and this reviewer would have been happier to see a greater awareness conveyed to the reader o f some o f the pitfalls in using mathematical and statistical techniques (especial b the apparently simple ones!). What would also l'tave been welcomed is a stronger indication in several chapter, o f where and when the ~rvices o f a specialist shoulc~ be sought. This seems .~specially true o f the services of the various Manage• -rent Services specialists. In fact, with one exception • , e Manag,:ment Services functions get sparse a,~d passing mention, OR for example beirg mentioned once briefly under the heading of Automad~ Data Prc,:essing Applications and once under the heading of More Sophisticated Computerised Decision Making'. The latter reference (which does not appear in the Index) does indicate some areas m which OR r is been successful but as implied by tk,e headings bo h references suggest that OR is above all a enrapt. "or activity. The use o f Computers and Computer Sys, -ms is the exceptiat, al area of Manag*ment Servi, *s which does get more extended treatment in several :hapters but even in the comparatively short time sint2 the text must have been written some topics are already beginning to wear a dated look.
3'$ 7
The very fact that the vohmre is ~,~'~,:it~calIy intended f~r Plant Et:gineers mean.; that certain topic',, are not covered but one or two of the missions .are surprising. CPM/FERT techniques, although mentinned several times. :ire heated very briet'iy, and while the physical storage of p:~r~s and purchasit~g methods are discussed there is almost nothing on the principles o f stock control. Again the techniques useful in plant layout and materials handEng are hardly touched upon. Nevertheless, in a work o f this size, these points o," criticism are far outweighed by the good features and it should prove a great help to the young engineer of bin.ted management experience as well as to some of his superiors. Apart from a few area3 of specifically US practice or legal requirement most of the contents can be ~sed as a direct guide or as a touchstone on which to test his current practice. For the OR professional, tire book is also of value especially it" he is working in the Engineering field and while he might not wish to expend a fair sum on buying it himself, he could do a great deal worse than to borrow it from the Engineering Library. The book is well produced and laid out and has a reasonable if not cornprehensive Index. This reviewer found the page numbering system somewhat irritating and he would have welcomed a large type face but :Iris presumably would have increased the cost considerably. llywe1114. REES British Steel Corporation Swansea, U.K.
Barry SttORE Quantitative Methods for Business Decisions: ~-e~t and Cases McGraw-Hill, Diisseldorf, x + 4~5 pages, DM .t6 ~0 This book provides some interesting materia ~ : an introdu, tory non-specialist course Jn Ouanti i'~ ,e Methods: that is. those elementary part.~ ,:f O k ' ~ta,istics deemed suitable tbr widespread o~'n-n .¢. it might :also possibly be looked at by teachers o," OR ,,s an example of a well-worked out way of s*ructuring teaching material. The author tnotisa'e ~, each of 15 "techniques" chapters by a ~.hort story showing how issues in a snippet el human enterprise lead on to models being drawn out. Each chapter t.en aims to give the student some elementary com-
348
B~ok Renews
petence, and after a set of shorter exercises invites him to tackle one, and sometime~ severn,, 2/3 page "cases", which fairly evidently call for a particular kind of simple model but which also call for reflection on how the model is to ~e structured and used. The topics are standard but freshly handled and with evident thougt,t on how ideas are to develop and be made menmrable. Chapters 2 - 6 cover proba"'ility, decisions under risk and uncertainty, revision of probabilities, and decision trees. Chapters 7 - I 0 cover formulation and solution of linear programming and transportvtion models. Chapters 11-16 cover inventory, qu2uing, simulation, networks and Markov models. Chapters 1, 17 and 18, true to the general style, use short stories to motivate the OR/ Sys'ems a?proaeh, discuss its place in the organisatio,t, and to introduce the cole and use of computers. By the end .~f the text, a student is likely to feel justifiably confident in doing a variety of simple things for hi~self. He will have the beginnings of a critical view about own-use models, and will perhaps have a little insight into the problems of exploring the properties of abstract systems. He will. however, have some blind spots. The chapter on queues is rather misjudged: it fails to convey any feel for the Poisson process, and fails to convey any feel for exponential service times and their very doubtful applicobilit y. More generally, a student is likely to expect models to pop up more easily than they do and data to he more readily available than it is. The lack of references to follow-up reading means that, despite the care taken with the stories and with the advice of Chapters t7 and 18, the student is stil', likely to have too httle feel for what the ~pecialist otfers to be a reliable negotiator at the client/special st interface. But the book is clearly sul:erior to the usual QM. text. H. BOOTttROYD
Robert GOODELL BROWN Materials Management Systems: A Modular Library Wiley, Chichester. 1977. xii + ,~36 pages, £17.30 This is a most unu~:tal book. During the course .~f his consuitancy worI, l',~ many Am:; ~..... ~nd European corporations and government agencies dus prolific author has developed a large suite of computer pro-
grams that are being used to control the flow of their materials. Here is a guide to the output produced by this library of programs; approximately 120 examples of their output are presented and explained. However, this is more than a users guide: it acts as a reference manual to the principles underlying the algorithms that have been implemented in the plograms. Tl'e author aims to present the fundamental structure of a materials management control system, with a range of options available in each part. As such it can be highly recommended. The first section, an overview, setting the framework for the other sections, deals with the four main parts of a materials management system: the action system, which produces instructions about what to make, what to pack and what to ship: the planning system, to ensure that the right materials are available at the right time to meet requirements; the requirements system, to forecast requirements; the strategy system, to set stock targets. The structure of the progcam library allows modules of these systems t:~ be mixed and combined at will, like building ¢.'Hh [.,ego. Section 2, dealing with the forecasting of reqairements, recommends a combination of statisti:al forecasting and marketing intelligence. Practical topics such as screening for outliers, introducing new items into the system and revising the forecast are covered, in addition to the usual technical material. "The proper measure of forecast error is the standard deviation rather than the mean ~bsolute deviation that has been popularised by IBM and its imitators" The decision rules, the management policy variables and the balances between running and capital costs that are possible are discussed in section 3 'h:ventory Management', whilst in section 4 methods of time-phased, net-requirements materials planning are presented. These two sections are the heart of the book and form an excellent introduction to these subjects. The final section deals with complete materials management systems, with special emphasis on the neglected area el" the management of stocks in distribution system~, t:t~r instance, procedures for replenishing stocks in depots are described. The book is full ot the author's wise comments and pungent advice. One anecdote will boost the ego of some of this journal's readers. Brown presented a proposal for an OR course to the Aeronautical Fngineedng Department faculty at the University of Michigan. At the end a senior professor ~nd 'Mr. Brown ... it" I understand what you are proposing ... you are suggesting a course ... in how to think'.