Engineering Decision Making And Risk Management

This book details decision analysis techniques with applications in engineering design and management and also analyzes decision making and risk management processes to better understand and improve decision making systems. Most books on decision analysis fall into two categories: those that are straightforward management decision making texts that that do not delve into more sophisticated techniques and concepts and those that emphasize the theoretical and analytical aspects, but do not discuss other perspectives on decision making. As such, this is the first book to present multiple perspectives on decision making without being too theoretical, all in effort to be useful to current and future engineers. The book presents three varied perspectives on decision making: problem-solving; the decision making process; and decision making systems. Practical examples and applications are plentiful and illustrate how to model and improve decision making systems. The mathematical rigor is kept to a minimum and is only used when comparing and contrasting different techniques. Extensive instructor resources are available, including worked solutions to all exercises, daily lesson plans for lectures, in-class activities, and sample assignments and exams. Topical coverage includes: an introduction to engineering decision making; decision making fundamentals; multi-criteria decision making; group decision making; decision making under uncertainty; game theory; decision making processes; the value of information; risk management; decision making systems; and modeling and improving decision making systems.

Jeffrey W. Herrmann, PhD, is Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, where he holds a joint appointment with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research. A member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the American Society for Engineering Education, Dr. Herrmann’s research interests include production scheduling, decision making in product development, and public health preparedness planning.