Intro

The purpose of the model which was created was to allow management at First Class Apparel
Corporation to see whether there was a better way of shipping products, to stop distributions
centres having a stock deficit, while also making sure costs were kept to a minimum.

Design

Conway and Ragsdale discuss that for a model to be easy to use it requires a standard format and
a common structure (Conway & Ragsdale, 1997).However, as a group we didnt use a standard
format as we believed there wasnt a standard which we could use throughout the whole
spreadsheet. Instead we focused on formatting the spreadsheet through using coloured cells and
shading where necessary. (SHOW SCREENSHOT) We implemented the common structure by adding
a toolbar to the top of each worksheet while also having the same structure on worksheets
displaying similar things, just with different data. Conway and Ragsdale go on to discuss the
guidelines to a good spreadsheet to which we created our model to. The main guideline which stood
out was Numeric constants should be placed in individual cells and labelled appropriately
(Conway & Ragsdale, 1997). We implemented this idea due to the fact it increased reliability
and accuracy within the spreadsheet (Conway & Ragsdale, 1997). Furthermore when
planning the model, we splitting the attributes into separate entities, making sure we
planned the inputs, calculations and outputs. By doing this it gave us a clear focus of the
direction we were going in, while also allowed us to spot any mistakes which needed to be
rectified.

Building
When building the spreadsheet model, we used a range of formulas and functions. We also used an
iterative process when making changes to the model. Before the build we made a list of inputs,
calculations and outputs necessary to produce the spreadsheet. After this we entered
Testing
The main reason we tested the model was to make sure that its free from error. The two main
types of errors attributed to spreadsheets are qualitative and quantitative. To make sure errors were
kept to a minimum we tried to make sure all data values were in individual cells and these were
referenced to the formulas, rather than adding numbers direct into the formulas. Furthermore with
a group of 4 people it was easier to spot errors as everyone was in turn proof reading the
spreadsheet. An error which became apparent while we were creating the model was a mechanical
error. As most of our formulas had cells referenced to different worksheets, sometimes we linked
the wrong cell which gave us different results (Lerch, 2008). Lerch explains how mechanical errors
percentage increases because of this (Lerch, 2008). In addition to this, when testing the model we
went through the process of testing to see if our inputs and formulas were right. To do this we chose
cells in the data worksheet at random and worked out manually whether the cell displayed the
correct answer based upon the cell referenced and the formula it included. Another way in which we
tested the spreadsheet was to use the error checking tool, which allowed us tell straight away if
there was an error, and it gave us options to rectify this error (Swan, 2008). (Talk about dummy
inputs)

Deployment

Conclusion





Talk about DSS ppt






Conway, D. G. and C. T. Ragsdale, (1997), Modelling Optimization Problems in the Unstructured
World of Spreadsheets, OMEGA, 25(3), pp.313-322.
Lerch, (2008), - http://panko.shidler.hawaii.edu/HumanErr/
Swan J., (2008), Practical Financial Modelling: A Guide to Current Practice, 2nd Edition - (CIMA
Professional Handbook), CIMA Publishing