MCDM and the Nature of Decision Making in Design

Abstract

In Chapter 1 a brief outline is provided of the motivation behind the use of multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques. Decision making, in general, and in engineering design, in particular, can be helpfully visualised as a collection of activities that relate to choice in the context of competing technical or functional requirements. The options may either be available and finite in number, as in consulting a catalogue, or they may need to be synthesised, as in engineering design. In any event, the implicit assumption that is often made is that the requirements in question are mutually compatible. This is the domain of classical optimisation in that it is being taken for granted that the stated requirements are mutually compatible or can be made so, although even in classical optimisation there is an implicit acknowledgement of conflict in only being able to design for a stated scenario.