Engineering Economist articles from March 1995

Engineering Economist archives from March 1995

A case study comparison of the analytic hierarchy process and a fuzzy decision methodology.
March 22, 1995... INTRODUCTION A decision methodology can be considered as good as its output results. If different approaches lead to different conclusions, the reasons for the divergence need to be analyzed so that the appropriate method can be selected to...

Integrating business strategy and capital allocation: an application of multi-objective decision making.
March 22, 1995... INTRODUCTION The emphasis placed on strategic planning in firms over the last two decades reflects the proposition that there are significant benefits to gain through an explicit process of formulating strategy toward some common set of goals...

Flexibility value as a tool for improving decision-making in flexible automation.
March 22, 1995... INTRODUCTION Improving the manufacturing flexibility has become increasingly important for enhancing the competitive advantage of manufacturing companies [32] and the FMS is being widely used for such a purpose by industrial manufacturers...

Using heuristics to evaluate projects: the case of ranking projects by IRR. (internal rate of return)
March 22, 1995... INTRODUCTION Financial management provides explicit rules for project evaluation and capital budgeting. For example, it specifies that managers should evaluate projects using a net present value (NPV) rule, discounting cash flows by...

Shooting in the dark: how computer software can improve the quality of public policies.
March 22, 1995... THE PROBLEM Most policy debates are fought largely with volleys of ideological slogans and isolated facts rather than evaluations of the costs and benefits arising from alternative proposals. In the crime debate, for example, one side...

Finding It on the Internet,
March 22, 1995... Jeffrey A. Joines North Carolina State University The development of the "Information Superhighway" is changing the way we conduct research and communicate ideas. The Internet offers a wide variety of resources from state-of-the-art research...

Interactive Decision Making.
March 22, 1995... Hrachya Kyureghian Virgin Polytechnic Institute and State University I very much enjoyed reading this interesting and well-written work by three outstanding Canadian Systems Design Engineering specialists. The authors are extremely enthusiastic...

Managing For Total Quality: From Deming to Taguchi and SPC.
March 22, 1995... Yahya Fathi North Carolina State University This book covers a wide range of topics from quality management to on-line and off-line quality control. On some topics, such as the off-line quality control, this broadness of coverage is accompanied...

What Every Engineer Should Know About Accounting and Finance.
March 22, 1995... Gilroy J. Zuckerman North Carolina State University A more appropriate rifle for this book would be "SOME of the Things Every Engineer Should HAVE KNOWN About Accounting and Finance" since the book does a reasonably good job of presenting the...