ABSTRACT
Decision techniques that seem to be management tools are also of importance to the engineer. Because the designer is faced with the necessity of making many decisions, knowledge of appropriate decision-making techniques can make the design process more efficient, thereby saving time and financial resources. The chapter is intended to give the reader a number of these techniques, with examples of their application. Decision problems can be characterized in terms of the information the decision maker has on the states of nature that will exist. In this sense, decisions may be categorized in one of four ways. That is, they are decisions made under certainty, risk, uncertainty, or conflict. The development of a criterion function allows the decision maker to express combinations of different product characteristics by a single number which can be easily compared to a like number for various alternatives. A decision tree is used to depict a scenario of multiple decisions.
