Tradeoff Decisions in System Design

This textbook is about three key aspects of system design: decision making under uncertainty, trade-off studies and formal risk analyses. Recognizing that the mathematical treatment of these topics is similar, the authors generalize existing mathematical techniques to cover all three areas. Common to these topics are importance weights, combining functions, scoring functions, quantitative metrics, prioritization and sensitivity analyses. Furthermore, human decision-making activities and problems use these same tools. Therefore, these problems are also treated uniformly and modeled using prospect theory. Aimed at both engineering and business practitioners and students interested in systems engineering, risk analysis, operational management, and business process modeling, Tradeoff Decisions in System Design explains how humans can overcome cognitive biases and avoid mental errors when conducting trade-off studies and risk analyses in a wide range of domains. With generous use ofexamples as a common thread across chapters this book.

Dr. Terry Bahill is Professor Emeritus of Systems and Industrial Engineering at the University of Arizona, Tucson and the author of six engineering books and 250 papers. Dr. Bahill has worked with dozens of technical companies presenting seminars on systems engineering and advising system development teams on description of their systems engineering processes. An elected Fellow of the IEEE, the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE)and of the AAAS, his research interests are in the fields of system design, modeling physiological systems, eye-hand-head coordination, human decision making, and systems engineering application and theory.

Dr. Azad M. Madni is a Professor of Astronautical Engineering and the Technical Director of Systems Architecting and Engineering at University of Southern California. He is the founder and Chairman of Intelligent Systems Technology, Inc., a company specializing in game-based educational simulations, methods, processes, and tools for complex systems engineering. An elected Fellow of the AAAS, the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics, the IEEE, and the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), his recent awards include the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from INCOSE-LA and the 2013 Innovation in Curriculum Award from the Institute of Industrial Engineers. His research interests include formal and probabilistic methods in systems engineering, model-based architecting and engineering, engineered resilient systems, and exploiting disciplinary and technology convergence to enhance systems engineering.