David L. Olson

This book expands the scope of risk management beyond insurance and finance to include accounting risk, terrorism, and other issues that can threaten an organization. It approaches risk management from five perspectives: in addition to the core perspective of financial risk management, it addresses perspectives of accounting, supply chains, information systems, and disaster management. It also covers balanced scorecards, multiple criteria analysis, simulation, data envelopment analysis, and financial risk measures that help assess risk, thereby enabling a well-informed managerial decision making. The book concludes by looking at four case studies, which cover a wide range of topics. These include such practical issues as the development and implementation of a sound risk management structure; supply chain risk and enterprise resource planning systems in information systems, and disaster management.

The purpose of this text is to provide the student with a comprehensive coverage of how management science concepts and approaches can be applied to improve management decision-making. The emphasis is on the translation of mathematical modeling concepts into a presentation that is palatable to the undergraduate student of business with limited mathematical background. Manage-ment science topics are introduced by presenting realistic, practical examples in the form of small case studies. Difficult techniques are presented within the framework of working examples, stressing an intuitive understanding of concepts in the decision support perspective rather than focusing on mathematical techniques for their own sake."

1 Facility Location Problems The location problem has been with humans for all of their history. In the past, many rulers had the decision of locating their capital. Reasons for selecting various locations included central location,transportation benefits to foster trade, and defensibility. The development of industry involved location problems for production facilities and trade outlets. Obvious th criteria for location ofbusiness facilities includedprofit impact. In the 19 century, there seemed to be a focus on the cost of transporting raw materials versus the cost of transporting goods to consumers. Location decisions were made considering all potential gains and expenses. Some judgment was required, because while most benefits and costs could be measured accurately, not all could be. Successful business practice depended on the soundjudgment of the decision-maker in solvinglocation problems. Each of these enterprises produced some wastes. Finding a location to dispose of these wastes was not a difficult task. In less-enlightened times, governments resorted to fiat and land-condemnationto take the sites needed th for disposal. In the 19 century, industry grew rapidly in Great Britain and elsewhere as mass production served expanding populations of consumers. The by-products of mass-production were often simply discarded in the most expeditious manner. There are still mountains in the United States Introduction 2 with artificial facades created from the excess material discarded from mining activity. We have developed the ability to create waste of lethal toxicity.

One of the most important tasks faced by decision-makers in business and government is that of selection. Selection problems are challenging in that they require the balancing of multiple, often conflicting, criteria. In recent years, a number of interesting decision aids have become available to assist in such decisions. The aim of this book is to provide a comparative survey of many of the decision aids currently available. The first chapters present general ideas which underpin the methodologies used to design these aids. Subsequent chapters then focus on specific decision aids and demonstrate some of the software which implement these ideas. A final chapter provides a comparative analysis of their strengths and weaknesses.