who has a Nobel, and I do believe him--

he's argued that the work of managers, scientists,

engineers, lawyers, the work that really kind of steers

and shapes our society, its economy, its government

organizations.

That work is largely about making decisions and solving

problems.

It's worthwhile spending a little bit of time thinking

about how we do this.

And that's really what our class management science is about,

basically solving making decisions and solving problems.

My name is Fred Easton.

I'm a Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management

at Syracuse University.

I teach there every day, and this is a course

that I developed quite some time ago.

Believe it or not, I think we started with Lotus 123.

The key idea behind the course is

that its built around a spreadsheet,

and in fact, sometimes we call it spreadsheet optimization.

A little bit about my bio, I guess in my undergraduate days,

I studied unusual combination, business, chemistry,

and biology.

I sort of had it in the back of my mind I wanted

to work in one of the health professions,

but an energy utility interviewed

me and it sound like a great deal

to go to work for them for a while.

So after five years later, and another degree, an MBA,

I was kind of thinking maybe it was time to get back

to my original goals.

But in the process, I also applied to graduate school

and ended up falling for the charms of Seattle.

So my PhD is in Operations Management from the University

of Washington.

I left there and came to Syracuse University, where

I've been pretty much ever since, working

my way through the ranks.

My research is primarily in resource management,

largely in the service sector, workforce scheduling

and staffing.

And we're finding lots of applications

these days in health care.

So that will probably permeate some of our discussions

as we go through the class.

Let me give you a broad outline of what

we will be doing this semester.

I mentioned that the course is built around spreadsheets.

So we're going to be looking at Lotus--

or sorry, Lotus, that was a long time ago.

Wasn't it?-- Microsoft Excel, and we're

up to the 2013 version in the stuff

that we're using with this class.

But I think maybe by the time it lands on your desk,

you'll be able to use the 2016 version of Office.

So there might be some minor differences,

but I don't think they will be too significant.

We'll guide you through it.

Now, all of us are spreadsheet experts, I'll bet,

but I'll show you, hopefully, a couple of things

that you haven't seen before, some things to do with Excel.

So woven into most of our class meetings

will be a couple of new Excel features.

For those of you that don't feel quite as comfortable with it,

we've got a bit of an orientation and some training

that you can do offline to get yourself up to speed.

Almost everybody survives the course.

We'll take you through, I guess, some ad hoc solution

methodologies first and then dive into that

the workhorse of our course, at least

for solution methodologies, that's Excel Solver.

And you'll quickly discover that solving

these problems, for the most part, isn't the big deal.

The big deal, the real challenge,

is really more of an art, form and that's

translating a problem that you think you understand

into something that your spreadsheet model can

understand, translating it into an algebraic series

of constraints, equations, formulations.

Really what we're going to try, that

will be where we're going to develop proficiency

with modeling for decision-making purposes.

We'll look at linear programs, network linear programs,

integer programs, non-linear programs, goal programs,

multi-objective programs, and get a great sense of these.

We'll find applications that might be familiar to you,

and others that you may not have encountered before,

as a means of improving your decision making.

We'll look at tools that can help

you compare dissimilar units in your organization.

Maybe get a sense of who's using resources effectively

and who can maybe benefit from what others

have learned in that regard.

I think we conclude with a little study of waiting,

something that we're all quite proficient at, it seems.

So that's pretty much the road map of where we're going.

It's one of my favorite subjects.

I like it a lot, and I hope by the end of this you do as well.