DEVELOPING DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS: A CONTAINER MANAGEMENT EXAMPLE

Abstract

The problem of managing an intercontinental container transportation system is used as an example of how knowledge from the areas of database design, management science, and human factors research can be combined in the design of a decision support system. Using a new representation of time-related database objects, we first present a logical data model of a container transportation system. A hierarchically distributed decision support system can be based on this model. A physical database structure is proposed and a survey of partial optimization models to be used in the decision support system is given.