A Decision Aid Approach for Optimisation Problems Involving Several Economic Functions

Moeti Joseph Rangoaga, Monga Kalonda Luhandjula, Stanislas Sakera Ruzibiza

Department of Decision Sciences, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa.

DOI: 10.4236/ajor.2012.23040                

Abstract

Many concrete real life problems ranging from economic and business to industrial and engineering may be cast into a multi-objective optimisation framework. The redundancy of existing methods for solving this kind of problems susceptible to inconsistencies, coupled with the necessity for checking inherent assumptions before using a given method, make it hard for a nonspecialist to choose a method that fits well the situation at hand. Moreover, using blindly a method as proponents of the hammer principle (when you only have a hammer, you want everything in your hand to be a nail) is an awkward approach at best and a caricatural one at worst. This brings challenges to the design of a tool able to help a Decision Maker faced with these kinds of problems. The help should be at two levels. First the tool should be able to choose an appropriate multi-objective programming technique and second it should single out a satisfying solution using the chosen technique. The choice of a method should be made according to the structure of the problem and to the Decision Maker’s judgment value. This paper is an attempt to satisfy that need. We present a Decision Aid Approach that embeds a sample of good multi-objective programming techniques. The system is able to assist the Decision Maker in the above mentioned two tasks.

Keywords

Database; Decision Support System; Model-Base; Multi-Objective Program; Pareto Optimality; Software

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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