Spreadsheet Usage: Some New Challenges and Opportunities

摘要

Electronic spreadsheet models and modeling (ESMs) have constituted a very important area of organizational and end-user computing for well over a decade. Given the importance of ESM, a substantial amount of research has already been aimed at various related issues and a specialinterest group SPRIG (Spreadsheet Productivity Research Interest Group, http:// sprig.section.informs.org/) exists in the INFORMS organization. In this concept paper, I briefly review the existing literature. Then I concentrate in more detail on some new needs related to data warehousing and data mining that arise due to recent developments in policy capturing and related estimation methods. Ragsdale's (2001) book discusses applications to virtually every functional area of business and to the standard topics of management science. More specialized application research has appeared, such as budgeting (Troutt, Yew, & Zhang, 2001), simulation (Mumford & Schultz, 1991), simulation optimization (Nersesian, Troutt, & Weinroth, 2001; Troutt, Nersesian, & Weinroth, 2004), and production planning (Troutt, Tadisina, & Clinton, 1991). Solver engines are now readily available for linear and nonlinear programming, as well as genetic algorithms, which enable such applications as simulation optimization in par- ticular. One can expect to see further growth in these capabilities to include other metaheuristic methods such as simulated annealing and Tabu search. The work in Troutt et al. (1991, 2001) seeks to further broaden the capabilities of ESM to a more macroview of general planning applications of ESM. Work on facilitating this view would be of interest and may be related to effective graphical user interfaces.