Selection Without Reflection is a Risky Buisness ...

Abstract

In engineering, designers are often faced with decisions involving conflicting objectives. Although existing Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) “methods” can aid decisionmakers in satisfying the required trade-offs, a basic understanding of the assumptions and limitations underlying the approaches is required. It is important to note that all of these so called MCDM “methods” have fundamental shortcomings, which render them inappropriate for carte blanche application. Making an educated decision, as to which method to choose for a particular problem, however, is confounded by the fact that over 70 MCDM methods have thus far been proposed within the literature. Although many approaches, aimed at facilitating the selection of the most suitable MCDM approaches for a particular task, have been proposed, these are misleading since they suggest the existence of a “best” method for a particular problem at hand. The very description of the MCDM techniques as methods is a misnomer, as the majority of them constitutes nothing more than attention directing tools and should be treated as such -with caution. Nevertheless, these attention directing tools, when used appropriately in a proper context, may have a significant amount of utility. It is for this reason that we advocate careful reflection (with regard to the problem at hand, the underlying assumptions/limitations of the attention directing tool considered, and interpretation of results) before selection.