Managers are constantly making decisions that affect profit. One of the decision‐making areas which is crucial to all managers concerns profit planning. Attempts to show how cost‐volume‐profit (CVP) analysis, aided by the computer spreadsheet, can be applied to the practical profit...

Spreadsheet software is now widely used as a decision‐making tool, owing to the simplicity and ease with which generalists can analyse and obtain fast and precise information. Through spreadsheet programs, a on‐specialist can conduct an exhaustive “what if” search in order to make...

The application of just‐in‐time manufacturing techniques in batch chemical processing environments, under conditions of variable demand, imposes significant capacity management problems. Making decisions which involve levels of customer service and resource untilization can be aided by the...

Provides guidelines to facilitate the development of usable, efficient and maintainable spreadsheet models. Whilst primarily written for those who may be building models for a third party, the article should also prove of value to the casual modeller.

Monte Carlo simulation is one of a number of analytical techniques available to enable managers to assess the risks surrounding capital budgeting decisions. Although it is covered in most texts on financial management, surveys have for many years pointed to only limited use of the technique by...

Purpose – Waiting lines and delays have become commonplace in service operations. As a result, customer waiting time guarantee is a widely used competition strategy in service industries. To implement waiting time guarantee strategy, managers need to not only know the average of waiting time,...

Reviews the literature on capacity planning at strategic, tactical and operational levels but points out that, in practice, many enterprise resource planning systems make unrealistic assumptions for production planning; and the advanced production software packages which can deal with...

Describes a spreadsheet approach for implementing Wagner‐Whitin (WW) and Silver‐Meal (SM) methods for lotsizing time‐varying demands. Suggests that this approach manages the computation and makes tedious and repetitive tasks more interesting; consequently, the student/user can concentrate...