MIS and DSS

The main goal of MIS is in allowing you to see (like in those sci-fi movies) the entities of the real world as they really are in all their properties, changing views, angles and focuses as you need to inspect some features closer and some from a bigger perspective. For example, when you walk through the College you actually do not see much beyond the walls, offices, and posters. Once you access the College MIS – you immediately see (supposedly) all involved entites and processes in their normal activities and deviations that have to be notices and corrected. Augmented reality (AR) allows you to combine physical vision with MIS orientation (this is where the research on MIS and AR will be appropriate!).

Decision Support Systems serve not as much as vision enhancers but as enhancers of your abilities of making decisions based on the vision. Human abilities to juggle numbers and keep various relationships among multiple parameters in mind are severely limited. Here come DSS. They allow you to use such tools as scenarios (when you change some assumptions and see what will happen to ALL parts you are interested in by providing formulas of the corresponding relationships), optimization (when the system quickly finds for you the best decision among many possible), and many others. Armed with such tools (especially now available in mobile formats) you become super beings (cyborgs, if you wish, as part human and part systems) far more advanced in your mental abilities than those who doesn’t use special supporting systems. I actually run a special course fully dedicated to DSS where students learn the decision theory (on how to always make best decisions in all situations) as well as how to arm yourselves with simple (and more advanced) DSS dramatically enhancing your decision making abilities and outcomes in all your activities. Recently one student emailed me that he got a job because of this knowledge.

You can use this power throughout all your life experiences no matter what you do and where you work. Although many industrial systems of this kind are very expensive, there are some simple tools (like spreadsheets in advanced forms of use) that already upgrade your abilities significantly. Some of them we are learning in this course. This is kung fu of modern life. The more work and understanding efforts of the material of this week you apply – the more you will get out of it. This is the way to compete with AI allowing the mankind to stay relevant.