Trade-off Analytics

Chapter 9An Integrated Model for Trade-Off Analysis

Alexander D. MacCalman

Department of Systems Engineering, United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, United States

Gregory S. Parnell

Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, United States

Sam Savage

School of Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States

 

Interactive Simulation Connects the Seat of the Intellect to the Seat of the Pants

(Sam Savage, Author of The Flaw of Averages)

9.1 Introduction

System engineers often use value modeling to capture a composite perspective of multiple stakeholders with conflicting objectives to help understand value trade-offs among several system alternatives. There are many uncertainties involved with designing a system, and we believe they must be considered in all system decisions throughout the life cycle. These uncertainties include stakeholder needs, technological maturity, adversary and competition actions, scenarios, costs, schedules, and many more. Uncertainty and risk analyses are often performed independent of the value model. As a result, our decisions become biased toward deterministic solutions, and system decision-makers may not understand the key uncertainties and risks. To eliminate this cognitive bias, we propose an approach that integrates uncertainty modeling with value and cost modeling in order to help understand value and risk while we analyze alternatives. Chapter 7 introduced value modeling, Chapter 4