.

【Topic】Teaching Management Science in Spreadsheets

【Speaker】Professor Larry J. LeBlanc

【Time】2007-6-5 10:30-12:00

【Venue】Room 301, Shunde Building

【Language】English

【Organizer】Department of Management Science and Engineering

【Target Audience】Faculty members, Master students and Ph.D. students

【Background Information】

Dr. Larry J. LeBlanc teaches a very successful course, "Management Science in Spreadsheets" to MBAs at the Owen Graduate School of Management,VanderbiltUniversity,Nashville,Tennesseein theU.S.This course is one of the most popular electives in theOwenSchoolwith enrollments of nearly 130 students in three sections. Professor LeBlanc will be an invited speaker at INFORMS' annual conference on Teaching Management Science at Georgia Tech,Atlanta,USA, this summer.

Dr. LeBlanc is also a guest editor of the special issue of the prestigious journal Interfaces on Spreadsheet Applications of Management Science and Operations Research.

Course Objectives for my Owen School MBA course: This course uses Microsoft Excel to demonstrate optimization modeling and simulation of financial and operations problems. The goal is to simultaneously teach optimization, simulation, and advanced features of Excel. Example financial applications include portfolio optimization, short-term cash flow planning, capital budgeting, and arbitrage models. Operations applications include aggregate production planning, facility location, inventory planning, personnel scheduling, and production scheduling with setup costs.

Advanced features of Excel, including pivot tables, data tables, form controls, auto and advanced filters, text worksheet functions, graphing, conditional formatting, and efficient downloading of data from the internet, are covered.