Proceedings of the 11th
International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology
(September 2000), ASME.
Abstract
Multi-criteria decision support methods are common in engineering
design. These methods typically rely on the specification of
importance weights to accomplish trade-offs among competing
objectives. Such methods can have difficulties, however: they may not
be able to select all possible Pareto optima, and
the direct specification
of importance weights can be arbitrary and ad hoc.
The inability to reach all Pareto optima is shown to
be surmountable by the consideration of trade-off strategy
as an additional parameter of a decision.
The use of indifference points to select a best solution,
as an alternative to direct specification of
importance weights, is presented, and a simple truss design
example is used to illustrate the concepts.