Textbooks

• Network Flows:Theory, Algorithms, and Applications
  Ravindra K. Ahuja, Thomas L. Magnanti, and James Orlin
  Prentice Hall, 1993, 846 pages



• Developing Spreadsheet-Based Decision Support Systems
  Michelle H. Seref, Ravindra K. Ahuja, and Wayne L. Winston
  Dynamic Ideas, 2007, 900 pages



• Developing Web-Enabled Decision Support Systems
  Abhijit A. Pol and Ravindra K. Ahuja
  Dynamic Ideas, 2007, 700 pages

This comprehensive text and reference book on network flows brings together the classic and contemporary aspects of the field - providing an integrative view of theory, algorithms, and applications. This 850 pages book provides an in-depth treatment of shortest path, maximum flow, minimum cost flow problems; describes over 150 applications of network flows to a variety of engineering, management, and scientific domains; contains over 800 exercises with varied difficulty levels; and provides extensive reference notes with historical contexts. This book is extensively used by researchers and practitioners world-wide and has also been adopted as a textbook at leading universities in the departments of Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Civil Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering. This book was awarded the 1993 Frederick W. Lanchester Prize. The Lanchester Prize is the most prestigious award of INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) and is given to the best English language publication of the year. The Lanchester Prize citation states- "In the last ten years, there has been an explosion of activity in which most of the fundamental algorithms for minimum cost network flows and related problems have been reworked and improved.....The authors have been among the leaders in this work. Now they have refined and integrated the most interesting and useful of the new results into a textbook that is admirable for its clear and elegant exposition, its completeness, its wealth of examples, and its extensive collection of suggested applications. This book is a well to which both students and researchers will return for instruction and inspiration."

The book also has a Solution Manual that contains solutions of all the exercises in the book. The Solution Manual is written by the authors and Charu C. Aggarwal. The Solution Manual is available free of charge to the faculty members who teach courses using the book as a text book or a reference book. To get a copy of the Solution Manual, write to Ravindra K. Ahuja or James B. Orlin. Half of the Solution Manual is available on the Web. The solutions of all the odd-numbered exercises are available at the following website: Solution Manual on the Web

Download the book outline…

The book, "Developing Spreadsheet-Based Decision Support Systems," describes how to develop decision support systems using Excel and VBA for Excel, and illustrates this development process through numerous case studies. The book contains three parts: (i) Excel Basics; (ii) VBA for Excel; and (iii) Case Studies. The first part of the book covers Excel essentials and the second part describes the programming language Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) for Excel. The third part describes the applications of Excel and Excel VBA to develop case studies arising in different braches in sciences, engineering, and management, with particular emphasis on management science applications. We also describe the development of spreadsheet-based case studies involving Access databases. The book contains an extensive set of review and hands-on exercises, and provides a set of team projects that students can do to master the material learnt. The book is self-complete and does not require any prior background in Excel or VBA for Excel.

The most innovative part of the book is developing about 30 case studies based on common applications arising in science, engineering, and business. The case studies developed include forecasting, inventory management, supply-chain management, portfolio management and optimization, facility location and layout, quality control, queuing systems, aggregate production planning, material requirement planning, and others. We have also created some case studies based on some puzzles, mathematics, and other high school subjects.

This book is intended to be used as a textbook for teaching undergraduate and graduate level courses in any branch of sciences, engineering, and management. By choosing appropriate case studies, the book can be used for courses in several different disciplines.

Download the book outline…

On the previous page, we emphasized the need of teaching decision support systems building skills to our students and gave details of the book on spreadsheet-based decision support systems. Though spreadsheet-based decision support systems are easy to develop and used for small to medium size applications, larger and more complex systems require data residing in databases. Databases are also all-pervasive and are critical to the efficient functioning of any organization. A web-enabled decision support system using databases requires data, a database management system (DBMS), a programming language, and a mechanism for web-enabling. A DBMS is used to store, manage, and process the data, while a programming language is used to build graphical user interfaces (GUI), to do complex data processing and presentation, and to incorporate external optimization engines. Several different software packages can be used to build such a DSS. We believe that the combination of Microsoft Access for DBMS, VB .NET for programming language, and ASP .NET scripting for web-enabling is easy to teach to students in a single course. Consequently, we have developed a complete set of instructional material in this framework for our second book, “Developing Web-Enabled Decision Support Systems.”

Download the book outline…