ABSTRACT
Utility analysis is a method, grounded in decision theory, to aid in the making of decisions. Utility analysis helps a decision maker to construct a real-valued function that encodes the decision maker’s preferences for all possible outcomes. This function can then be used to determine which course of action, or decision, has the best expected result. Utility analysis is a general method, applicable in many different fields. Its application in engineering design is in the context of multiattribute optimization under uncertainty: the alternatives, or candidate designs, are given as vectors in Rn, and the performance of each design can be described by a vector in Rm. The application of utility theory in engineering design serves two important purposes:
1. Under reasonably general conditions, the utility function allows a designer to specify preferences independently with respect to a number of different attributes, and use that to construct a singlevalued objective function that incorporates all the attributes and reconciles them on a single scale.
