Educational Values of PROSIM

• Introducing students to the terminology, concepts, and decision problems of a discipline.
• Developing student interest, involvement, and motivation.
• Having students learn how to work together as a group.
• Developing planning and control skills under conditions of uncertainty.
• Having students learn to apply concepts and analytical techniques in decision making.
• Providing students with a "hand-on" computer experience.

From the above partial listing, it is evident that PROSIM may be used to induce different kinds of learning and to meet different teaching objectives at various levels of sophistication. As such, in a beginning production/operations management course, the instructor might not expect decision making with PROSIM to be as sophisticated as he/she would with students in an advanced one. In the first course, the instructor might emphasize the mastery of basic concepts, the application of the basic analytical tools given in the text, and the importance of objectives such as long-term cost minimization, the meeting of the firm's demand schedules, and the like. On the other hand, in a more advanced course, the instructor might concentrate on more sophisticated types of analysis and more rigorous applications of quantitative decision-making tools.

For a test drive on the system, please click Here to download a demonstration version of the system (refer to Demon and Fix option for the instruction on how to install it) or an instructor can request an examination copy of the PROSIM textbook and disks from your Irwin representative or call Irwin College Division at 800-323-4560.