  Spreadsheets have grown up and became very powerful and easy to use tools in
applying analytical techniques for solving business problems. Operations
managers, production managers, planners and schedulers can work with them in
developing solid and practical Do-It-Yourself Decision Support Systems. Small
and Medium size organizations, can apply OR methodologies without the presence
of specialized software and trained personnel, which in many cases cannot
afford anyway. This paper examines an efficient approach in solving
combinatorial programming problems with the use of spreadsheets. A practical
application, which demonstrates the approach, concerns the development of a
spreadsheet-based DSS for the Multi Item Procurement Problem with Fixed Vendor
Cost. The DSS has been build using exclusively standard spreadsheet feature and
can solve real problems of substantial size. The benefits and limitations of
the approach are also discussed.
