Multiattribute Decision Making in Centralized and Decentralized Design

在这个项目中，将解决集中式和分散式设计过程中多属性决策所固有的理论和实践挑战。智力上的进步包括开发一种稳健的方法来进行概率、多属性决策，该方法以理论上合理的方式使用决策者声明的偏好。该计划是为确定分散设计过程是否稳定和收敛而开发可证明的条件。一旦形成了这些条件，计划利用它们来研究如何有效地改变分散的决策过程，以获得比传统的顺序或迭代过程找到的更好的集体解决方案。由于决策被认为是工程设计中的一个基本结构，这项工作中发展的原理将影响许多科学团体，包括设计理论、运筹学、设计自动化和控制理论。此外，这些改进对于工业设计过程中的多属性决策场景非常重要，从选择设计概念，到确定解决方案配置，到选择材料，再到选择供应商。结果将适用于广泛的设计教育活动，包括大二和大四的产品设计课程，研究生水平的设计课程，以及基于决策的设计工作坊。还预计，这些发展将促进与决策科学、产品营销和微观经济学研究人员的进一步合作。最后，这些进步将包括本科生、通过数学天赋项目和暑期工作坊学习的高中生，以及通过联邦政府资助的两个项目学习科学、工程和数学的少数民族学生。

In this project, the theoretical and practical challenges inherent in multiattribute decision making in centralized and decentralized design processes will be addressed. The intellectual advancements include developing a robust approach to probabilistic, multiattribute decision making that uses decision makers' stated preferences in a theoretically sound manner. The plan is to develop provable conditions for determining whether decentralized design processes are stable and convergent or not. Once these conditions are developed, the plan is to use them to study how to effectively alter a decentralized decision process in order to achieve better collective solutions than those found by traditional sequential or iterative processes. Since decision making is recognized as a fundamental construct in engineering design, the principles developed in this work will impact a number of scientific communities, including design theory, operations research, design automation, and control theory. In addition, the advancements are important to multiattribute decision scenarios in industrial design processes, from selecting a design concept, to determining a solution configuration, to choosing materials, to selecting suppliers. The results will be applicable across a wide range of design education activities, including sophomore and senior product design courses, graduate level design courses, and workshops on decision-based design. It is also anticipated that the developments will foster further collaborations with researchers in decision sciences, product marketing, and microeconomics. Lastly, the advancements will involve undergraduate research students, high school students through a gifted math program and summer workshops, and minority students in Science, Engineering and Mathematics through two federally sponsored programs.