DECISION SUPPORT

SYSTEMS

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

Introduction
The more information you get from external sources,
better your decisions will be. Business executives are
faced with the same dilemmas while making decisions.
For this they need a lot of information from various tools.
A decision support system is a way to model data and
make quality decisions based upon it.
Making the right decision in business is usually based on
the quality of your data and your ability to sift through and
analyze the data to find trends in which you can create
solutions and strategies for.
DSS or decision support systems are usually computer
applications along with a human component that can sift
through large amounts of data and pick between the
many choices.

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

Decision Support Systems (DSS) help executives
make better decisions by using historical and current
data from internal Information Systems and external
sources. By combining massive amounts of data with
sophisticated analytical models and tools, and by making
the system easy to use, they provide a much better
source of information to use in the decision-making
process.
Decision Support Systems (DSS) are a class of
computerized information systems that support decisionmaking activities. DSS are interactive computer-based
systems and subsystems intended to help decision
makers use communications technologies, data,
documents, knowledge and/or models to successfully
complete decision process task.

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

History
Beginning in about 1980 many activities associated with
building and studying DSS occurred in universities and
organizations that resulted in expanding the scope of
DSS applications. These actions also expanded the field
of decision support systems beyond the initial business
and management application domain. These diverse
systems were all called Decision Support Systems. From
those early days, it was recognized that DSS could be
designed to support decision-makers at any level in an
organization. Also, DSS could support operations
decision making, financial management and strategic
decision-making.

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

Framework
A properly designed DSS is an interactive softwarebased system intended to help decision makers compile
useful information from a combination of raw data,
documents, personal knowledge, or business models to
identify and solve problems and make decisions.
Typical information that a decision support application
might gather and present are:
an inventory of all of your current information assets
(including legacy and relational data sources, cubes,
data warehouses, and data marts)
comparative sales figures between one week and the
next,
projected revenue figures based on new product sales
assumptions.

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

As with the definition, there is no
universally-accepted taxonomy of DSS
either.
Different authors propose different
classifications.
Using the relationship with the user as the
criterion, Haettenschwiler
differentiates passive, active,
and cooperative DSS.

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

Classification criteria: Relationship with
User

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

DSS that just collect data and organize it effectively are
usually called passive models, they do not suggest a
specific decision, and they only reveal the data.
An active decision support system actually processes
data and explicitly shows solutions based upon that data.
A cooperative DSS allows the decision maker (or its
advisor) to modify, complete, or refine the decision
suggestions provided by the system, before sending
them back to the system for validation. The system again
improves, completes, and refines the suggestions of the
decision maker and sends them back to her for
validation. The whole process then starts again, until a
consolidated solution is generated.

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

Another taxonomy for DSS has been
created by Daniel Power.
Using the mode of assistance as the
criterion, Power
differentiates communication-driven DSS,
data-driven DSS, document-driven
DSS, knowledge-driven DSS, and modeldriven DSS.
Using scope as the criterion,
Power differentiates enterprise-wide
DSS and desktop DSS.

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

Classification criteria: Mode of Assistance

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

A communication-driven DSS supports more than one
person working on a shared task; examples include integrated
tools like Microsoft's NetMeeting or Groove.
A data-driven DSS or data-oriented DSS emphasizes access
to and manipulation of a time series of internal company data
and, sometimes, external data.
A document-driven DSS manages, retrieves, and
manipulates unstructured information in a variety of electronic
formats.
A knowledge-driven DSS provides specialized problemsolving expertise stored as facts, rules, procedures, or in
similar structures.
A model-driven DSS emphasizes access to and manipulation
of a statistical, financial, optimization, or simulation model.
Model-driven DSS use data and parameters provided by
users to assist decision makers in analyzing a situation; they
are not necessarily data-intensive.

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

Classification criteria: Scope

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

An enterprise-wide DSS is linked to large
data warehouses and serves many
managers in the company.
A desktop, single-user DSS is a small
system that runs on an individual
manager's PC.

Decision Support Systems (DSS)

Benefits of DSS
Improves personal efficiency
Expedites problem solving (speed up the progress of
problems solving in an organization)
Facilitates interpersonal communication
Promotes learning or training
Increases organizational control
Generates new evidence in support of a decision
Creates a competitive advantage over competition
Encourages exploration and discovery on the part of the
decision maker
Reveals new approaches to thinking about the problem
space
Helps automate the managerial processes.

GROUP DECISION
SUPPORT SYSTEMS
(GDSS)

Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS)

Technical developments in electronic communication,
computing, and decision support, coupled with new
interest on the part of organizations to improve meeting
effectiveness, are spurring research in the area of group
decision support systems (GDSS).
A GDSS combines communication, computing, and
decision support technologies to facilitate formulation
and solution of unstructured problems by a group of
people.
Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) are a class
of electronic meeting systems, a collaboration
technology designed to support meetings and group
work.

Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS)

GDSS are distinct from Computer Supported
Cooperative Work (CSCW) technologies as GDSS are
more focused on task support, whereas CSCW tools
provide general communication support.
Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) were
referred to as a Group Support System (GSS) or
an Electronic Meeting System or Groupware since they
shared similar foundations.
However today's GDSS is characterized by being
adapted for a group of people who collaborate to support
integrated systems thinking for complex decision
making.
Participants use a common computer or network to
enable collaboration.

Group Decision Support Systems (DSS)

Significant research supports the following advantages
of GDSS:
- Adapting human factors for these technologies,
- Facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration, and
- Promoting effective organizational learning.
- More participation
- Group synergy
- Automated record keeping
- More structure in the meeting
- higher group satisfaction with the meeting process.
- the new technology has enabled larger groups to meet,
resulting in more information, knowledge, and skills that
are brought to bear to the task at hand.

Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS)

Disadvantages of GDSS:
- Slow Communication: Most people speak much faster
than they type, and thus would usually prefer a verbal
environment
- Not all Tasks are Amenable to GDSSs: Group meetings
which involve "one-to-many" communication (for
example, a leader lecturing to the group) would not
benefit from a GDSS. Only those tasks which require
group members to exchange ideas or preferences
efficiently ("many-to-many") would benefit.

INTELLIGENT
SYSTEMS (IS)

Intelligent Systems (IS)

What is intelligence?
There are many definitions of intelligence.
- A person that learns fast or one that has a vast amount
of experience, could be called "intelligent".
- However for our purposes the most useful definition is:
the systems comparative level of performance in
reaching its objectives.
This implies having experiences where the system
learned which actions best let it reach its objectives.
What is a System?
- A system is part of the universe, with a limited extension
in space and time.
What is outside the frontier of the system, we call its
environment.

Intelligent Systems (IS)

Though it is hard to quantify the intelligence of a system,
one can certainly recognize the following two extremes
in relation to some of the characteristics that it may
possess:
(a) Low intelligence: Typically a simple system, it has to
be \told" everything and needs complete instructions,
needs low-level control, the parameters are set, it is
usually mechanical.
(b) High intelligence: Typically a complex system, it is
autonomous to a certain extent and needs few
instructions, determines for itself what the goals are,
demands high-level control, adaptive, makes decisions
and choices, it is usually computerized.

Intelligent Systems (IS)

Hence Intelligent Systems are those which
learn from their past experiences and put
this knowledge in current and future
decision making.
There are many kinds of Intelligent
Systems. Such as : Artificial Intelligent
Systems, Fuzzy Logic Systems, Expert
Systems, Artificial Neural Networks
Systems and Genetic Algorithm Systems

Intelligent Systems (IS)

Artificial Intelligent Systems (Artificial Intelligence)
The definitions for what 'Artificially Intelligent' Systems
are can be categorized into four classes:

Intelligent Systems (IS)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of
machines and the branch of computer science that aims
to create it.
the field is defined as "the study and design of intelligent
agents.
where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its
environment and takes actions that maximize its
chances of success.
John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it
as "the science and engineering of making intelligent
machines.
The field was founded on the claim that a central
property of humans, intelligencethe sapience of Homo
sapienscan be so precisely described that it can be
simulated by a machine

Intelligent Systems (IS)

AI's scientific goal is to understand intelligence by
building computer programs that exhibit intelligent
behavior.
It is concerned with the concepts and methods of
symbolic inference, or reasoning, by a computer, and
how the knowledge used to make those inferences will
be represented inside the machine.
the term intelligence covers many cognitive skills,
including the ability to solve problems, learn, and
understand language; AI addresses all of those.
But most progress to date in AI has been made in the
area of problem solving -- concepts and methods for
building programs that reason about problems rather
than calculate a solution.

Intelligent Systems (IS)

Expert Systems
An expert system is software that attempts to provide
an answer to a problem, or clarify uncertainties where
normally one or more human experts would need to be
consulted.
AI programs that achieve expert-level competence in
solving problems in task areas by bringing to bear a
body of knowledge about specific tasks are called
knowledge-based or expert systems.
Expert systems are most common in a specific problem
domain, and is a traditional application and/or subfield
of artificial intelligence.

Intelligent Systems (IS)

A wide variety of methods can be used to simulate the
performance of the expert however common to most or
all are:
1) the creation of a knowledge base which uses
some knowledge representation formalism to capture
the Subject Matter Expert's (SME) knowledge and
2) a process of gathering that knowledge from the SME and
codifying it according to the formalism, which is
called knowledge engineering.
Expert systems may or may not have learning
components but a third common element is that once the
system is developed it is proven by being placed in the
same real world problem solving situation as the human
SME, typically as an aid to human workers or a
supplement to some information system.

Intelligent Systems (IS)

Fuzzy Logic Systems (Fuzzy Systems)
Logic is used for knowledge representation and problem
solving, but it can be applied to other problems as well.
Fuzzy systems can be used for uncertain reasoning and
have been widely used in modern industrial and
consumer product control systems.
A fuzzy system is a control system based on fuzzy logic
a mathematical system that analyzes analog input
values in terms of logical variables that take on
continuous values between 0 and 1, in contrast to
classical or digital logic, which operates on discrete
values of either 0 or 1 (true or false).

Intelligent Systems (IS)

The term itself inspires a certain skepticism, sounding
equivalent to "half-baked logic" or "bogus logic", but the
"fuzzy" part does not refer to a lack of rigor in the
method, rather to the fact that the logic involved can deal
with fuzzy conceptsconcepts that cannot be expressed
as "true" or "false" but rather as "partially true".
Although genetic algorithms and neural networks can
perform just as well as fuzzy logic in many cases , fuzzy
logic has the advantage that the solution to the problem
can be cast in terms that human operators can
understand.

Intelligent Systems (IS)

Artificial Neural Networks
The technique is rooted in and inspired by the biological
network of neurons in the human brain that learns from
external experience, handles imprecise information,
stores the essential characteristics of the external input,
and generalizes previous experience.
An artificial neural network (ANN), usually called
"neural network" (NN), is a mathematical
model or computational model that tries to simulate the
structure and/or functional aspects of biological neural
networks.

Intelligent Systems (IS)

It consists of an interconnected group of artificial
neurons and processes information using
a connectionist approach to computation.
In most cases an ANN is an adaptive system that
changes its structure based on external or internal
information that flows through the network during the
learning phase.
They can be used to model complex relationships
between inputs and outputs or to find patterns in data.

Artificial Neural Network

A neural network is an interconnected group of nodes,
akin to the vast network of neurons in the human brain

Intelligent Systems (IS)

Genetic Algorithms
GAs are probabilistic search techniques loosely based
on the Darwinian principle of evolution and natural
selection.
A genetic algorithm (GA) is a search technique used
in computing to find exact or approximate solutions
to optimization and search problems.
Genetic algorithms are a particular class of evolutionary
algorithms (EA) that use techniques inspired
by evolutionary
biology such
as inheritance, mutation, selection, and crossover.

Thank You!

Presented By:
SHILPI JAIN