Solving dynamic optimization problems on a personal computer using an electronic spreadsheet

Powerful desk top computers of today combined with the easy to manipulate electronic spreadsheet programs (e.g. Lotus 1-2-3) are being used quite extensively in business applications such as planning, forecasting and accounting. Currently we are also witnessing a proliferation of optimization/operations research related software which can solve reasonable size nonlinear programs (e.g. Eureka: The Solver), linear and integer programming problems …