Engineering Decision Making Methods Term Paper

Engineering Decision Making Methods
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Abstract
The engineering process comprises a series of interrelated operations driven by decisions. Therefore, an effective design process greatly relies upon an effective decision making. This paper seeks to analyze literature done on engineering decision making methods. From the literature, an appropriate method is chosen for further analysis. There are various decision making methods that exist and are applicable to several fields of ISE. A major characteristic of these decision making applications is that they attempt to resolve one decision making problem at a time. The MADISE method was found to overcome this predicament and was chosen for discussion in this paper. The MADISE approach is deemed to be a flexible and complete approach.
Keywords: decision-making process, engineering design, MADISE method, Information system Engineering.
Introduction
The engineering process may be seen as a series of interrelated operations, which are driven by decisions. Therefore, an effective engineering process relies markedly upon effective decision making. Supporting decision making may play a cardinal role in achieving engineering process achievement. This paper seeks to review 5 articles with regard to decision making methods in the engineering field. The paper then proceeds to describe the MADISE (MAke Decisions in Information System Engineering) decision making method and how its applicability. The method was chosen due to its flexibility and completeness in various engineering decision making situations.
Literature Review
The first article reviewed is by Kornyshova and Deneckere (2012). According to the authors, Information Systems engineering (ISE) processes have steps where decisions must be made. In addition, the expanding role of Information Systems involves engineering requirements such as cost, quality, time among others. Considering these engineering aspects signifies that the number of researchers handling decision making in ISE are increasing. There are various decision making methods that exist and are applicable to several fields of ISE. A major characteristic of these decision making applications is that they attempt to resolve one decision making problem at a time. In line with this, the authors have developed a decision making approach (MADISE) that aims at guiding information systems engineers through the decision making activity.
MADISE means MAke Decisions in ISE. In their article, the authors check for flexibility and completeness of MADISE tool by comparing it with five well-known approaches. The MADISE approach entails three elements: MADISE method family, MADISE ontology and Decision Making methodological repository. The MADISE approach is complete at it includes guidelines for identification of alternative list and the guidelines for identifying the criteria list. The MADISE approach is also found to be the mo...