Engineering Decision Making Methods Term Paper

Engineering Decision Making Methods
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Abstract
The engineering process comprises a series of interrelated operations driven by decisions. Therefore, an effective design process greatly relies upon an effective decision making. This paper seeks to analyze literature done on engineering decision making methods. From the literature, an appropriate method is chosen for further analysis. There are various decision making methods that exist and are applicable to several fields of ISE. A major characteristic of these decision making applications is that they attempt to resolve one decision making problem at a time. The MADISE method was found to overcome this predicament and was chosen for discussion in this paper. The MADISE approach is deemed to be a flexible and complete approach.
Keywords: decision-making process, engineering design, MADISE method, Information system Engineering.
Introduction
The engineering process may be seen as a series of interrelated operations, which are driven by decisions. Therefore, an effective engineering process relies markedly upon effective decision making. Supporting decision making may play a cardinal role in achieving engineering process achievement. This paper seeks to review 5 articles with regard to decision making methods in the engineering field. The paper then proceeds to describe the MADISE (MAke Decisions in Information System Engineering) decision making method and how its applicability. The method was chosen due to its flexibility and completeness in various engineering decision making situations.
Literature Review
The first article reviewed is by Kornyshova and Deneckere (2012). According to the authors, Information Systems engineering (ISE) processes have steps where decisions must be made. In addition, the expanding role of Information Systems involves engineering requirements such as cost, quality, time among others. Considering these engineering aspects signifies that the number of researchers handling decision making in ISE are increasing. There are various decision making methods that exist and are applicable to several fields of ISE. A major characteristic of these decision making applications is that they attempt to resolve one decision making problem at a time. In line with this, the authors have developed a decision making approach (MADISE) that aims at guiding information systems engineers through the decision making activity.
MADISE means MAke Decisions in ISE. In their article, the authors check for flexibility and completeness of MADISE tool by comparing it with five well-known approaches. The MADISE approach entails three elements: MADISE method family, MADISE ontology and Decision Making methodological repository. The MADISE approach is complete at it includes guidelines for identification of alternative list and the guidelines for identifying the criteria list. The MADISE approach is also found to be the most flexible; hence, can be adapted to various situations in a clear and easier manner (Kornyshova & Deneckere, 2012).
The next article reviewed is by Triantaphyllou and Mann (1995). The article elaborates on how to use the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for the purposes of engineering decision making. Additionally, the paper also focuses on the challenges of using this process. In most industrial engineering applications, the ultimate decision is usually based on the evaluation of several alternatives dependent of a number of criteria. The decision making problem further becomes difficult when the criteria are represented in different units, or when the pertinent data are hard to quantify. AHP is an effective method of dealing with this kind of decision making predicaments.
AHP is a multi-criteria approach, which is a decision support tool that can be used in solving complex engineering decisions problems. The approach utilizes a multi-level hierarchical structure of criteria, subcriteria, alternatives and objectives. The pertinent data are drawn from a set of pairwise comparisons. These pairwise comparisons are utilized to obtain the weights of importance with regard to the decision criteria. Further, the comparisons are utilized to obtain the relative performance measure of each alternative in terms of individual decision criterion. Where the comparisons are not perfectly consistent, the approach provides a mechanism that enables the consistency to be improved (Triantaphyllou & Mann, 1995).
The third article reviewed is by Scott and Antonsson (2000). The article establishes that the Arrow's general possibility theory has only an indirect application to engineering decision making method. Arrow's theorem states that there is no equitable, consistent method for social choice. The authors further note that engineering design decisions are usually based on the aggregation of preferences. Foundations of many engineering decision making methods is an explicit comparison of preference degrees. This comparison is not usually available in the social choice problem. The explicit comparison of level of preference is coupled with the decision to choose an aggregation of methods. Further, some forms of aggregation may be deemed inappropriate or inadequate in engineering design.
Imperative tasks in engineering design entail the generating and refining of design alternatives, and then selecting a single design, or an aggregate of designs, to accomplish a particular need. This entails finding the best alternatives. In most times, the determination of the best alternative is relatively unambiguous and straightforward. Sometimes, determination of the best alternative is complex. In these instances, it is difficult to combine separate weak orders into one social order. In the group decision-making theory, Arrow's theorem objects to the validity of combining separate and weak orders to a single social order. The article further notes that discussions in the design community have ignited questions with regards to the applicability of Arrow's theorem to engineering decision making.
In their conclusion, Arrow's theorem does not prove that engineering design decision making problem have a rational answer. Nonetheless, the theory offers a caution to the methods that attempt to solve a multi-criteria decision problem. In this sense, the theory states that a comparison of preferences should be made explicit. Henceforth, a decision method should have a clear procedure for assigning values to the design alternatives, and for combining these values to a single performance function (Scott & Antonsson, 2000).
The fourth article analyzed is by Endsley et al. (2007). The authors note that cognitive engineering and decision making (CEDM) have grown rapidly in the past decade. Work falling in this area is widely practiced across Europe and other countries globally. Additionally, there is a significa...