The Information, Tours and Tickets (ITT) office could use a system to assist them in creating trip schedules. In this paper I will outline a plan for a Decision Support System (DSS) that will assist ITT in creating schedules for their tours. This system will also track customer surveys and hold data about all of ITTs trips. They already have some computer systems, a spread sheet program and a data base management system (DBMS) which can all be used to build a small DSS. Using the DBMS and the spread sheet software I have designed a system to assist them in making decisions about scheduling trips. This system also allows them access to information about all of ITTs trips and the feedback from customers about each trip. In the next few paragraphs I go through the major steps in developing a system of this nature. A system of this type goes through several phases in its development.
English: Schema of the Process of problem solving....
Information
Information overloadI start with the planning phase and go on to discuss research, analysis and conceptual design. Then I talk a little about the models used in this system. I finish by talking about the actual design, the construction, and the implementation of the new ITT system. I finish the paper with a discussion of maintaining the system.
The first step in building any DSS is planning. Planning is basically defining the problem. The planning also involves an assessment of exactly what is needed. In this case I deal with trip scheduling. In the case description this would include: How many trips to offer, the days of the week to have particular trips, and when to cancel trips. Obviously the scheduling ties to other information such as profit and participation, but for this paper I will only cover the scheduling portion of ITTs problem.