Advanced Decision Making for Engineering Managers

1
Advanced Decision Making for Engineering Managers

• Introduction
• Hongyi Chen
• Department of Mechanical and Industrial
  Engineering
• University of Minnesota Duluth

I would like to thank Dr. Dundar F. Kocaoglu for
his help with this class.
2
Todays Plan

• Introduction
• Self introduction
• Course introduction
• Syllabus
• Introduction to Decision Making

3
Self Introduction

• Name
• Major
• Research interests
• Why do you take this course

4
Course Objectives

• To develop an understanding of decision-making
  methodologies and concepts, and apply them to
  technical decisions
• To give practicing managers a toolkit to
  successfully develop a decision making process.

5
Required Readings

• Textbook R. T. Clemen, T. Reilly, Making Hard
  Decisions with DecisionTools, 2nd edition,
  Duxbury Thomson Learning, 2001
• (two different levels of reading requirement)
• Journal and conference papers covering a variety
  of topics will be assigned

6
Course Format

• Half lecture
• Half discussion

7
Grading Percentage

• Mid-term Exam (I) 30
• Term Project Report (T) 25
• Reading briefs (T) 20
• Case study reports (T) 10
• Team Presentations (T) 5
• Homework (I) 5
  (bonus)
• Class participation (I) 10

For all the team reports, your individual score
grade given to your team (work satisfactorily
completed by you / work assigned to you)
8
Reading Briefs

• Brief summary of the article(s)
• Key learning
• How the concepts/methods learned can apply to
  your job, your career, or other areas of interest
  to you
• Bring the decision issues up to date and discuss
  what could have been done differently to keep the
  model valid in todays situation
• Points that you have difficulty with (whether you
  do not understand or do not agree)
• Question(s) for class discussion (submit high
  value questions (make us think) on a particular
  aspect/concept, issues etc., for discussion in
  class.)
• Articles listed in each RB may be assigned to
  different teams.

9
Case Studies

• Summarize the case
• Identify facts and issues presented in the case
• Analyze the situation
• Discuss the results
• Make recommendations
• Elaborate on additional considerations
• Submit a hard copy of the team report for each
  case addressing items 1-6 above.
• Present the case and discuss it in the class.
• (One of the teams takes the lead in the
  presentation. The other teams participate in the
  discussions. Team members highlight the issues,
  ask questions, answer other teams questions,
  make recommendations, challenge others
  recommendations, identify and explore additional
  issues.)

10
Team Project

• Topic is up to student, but it must be related to
  decision makings.
• Topic should advance students career or be
  something the student enjoys.
• 25 of course grade (presentation)
• Minimum Length 15 pages of text (double space)
• Maximum Length 20 pages excluding tables,
  pictures, figures, captions, appendices and
  references.
• Students will submit a written proposal on March
  8th.
• Instructor will provide feedback in the following
  week.
• Final paper is due on May 8th.

11
Team Project

• A theoretical model developmentConduct
  literature research in the filed of decision
  makings, identify a literature gap or a
  theoretical model that needs improvement, propose
  your solution or develop your own model, verify
  your model with data, and discuss application
  fields, limitations and future works of your
  model.
• A practical applicationIdentify a critical
  decision problem and a decision making process
  from your work or in your interested field, apply
  concepts and techniques learned from the class to
  analyze the problem, make justified assumptions
  as needed, develop a decision model, propose your
  solutions, and discuss assumptions and
  limitations of your analysis.

12
Potentially Excellent Research Topics

• This is a decision model proposed by literatures.
  However, it has the following limitations and we
  will improve this theoretical model by addressing
  these limitations.
• This is a relevant decision making concept/method
  that is not discussed in the class. We are going
  to research on it and demonstrate its application
  through our example.
• This is an issue that our organization deals with
  on a regular basis. However, there is not a
  standard process to ensure consistent decision
  makings. We will help our organization build such
  a standard decision model.
• We recently encountered this problem at work/in
  our life, we are going to propose solutions to
  the problem by applying concepts and
  methodologies acquired from this class.
• We are very interested in one of the decision
  model discussed in this class and we are going to
  show its applications in a field different than
  those covered in literature.

13
Soso Research Topics

• My boss is a bonehead. I have been telling
  him/her how to do it right for years. But
  noooooo!!!!!! Now I am going to use science to
  prove my point.
• I once used this concept/model/tool to make a
  decision and I want to tell you about it.
• I can find all kinds of decision making concepts
  we learned in class at work.
• There are all kinds of examples of this one
  specific decision making concept at work.
• This is our companys decision making process.

14
Structure of Typical Research Paper

• Abstract (ltlt 150 words)
• Introduction (Research question, thesis
  statement)
• Literature search
• Discussion of research method
• Results Evidence
• Conclusion, implications, limitations and
  suggestions for future research

15
The Proposal

• Proposal should consist of..
• A Title
• An abstract (ltlt200 words) that summarizes the
  paper
• Introduction
• Paragraph 1 ____ has been shown to be an issue.
• Paragraph 2 Research question What are we
  going to investigate?
• Paragraph 3 Thesis statement In this paper we
  intend to show that
• The beginning of a literature review What have
  others said about this subject?
• A few words on research methods How will we
  approach this problem? Where to find data?
• Key diagrams, tables and captions

16
Data Collection

• Objective and/or subjective data should be
  collected for your decision model(s) from various
  sources including but not being limited to
• literature,
• interviews,
• publicly available documents,
• quantification of the judgments of people
  involved in the decision making process that you
  are studying,
• quantification of team members judgments,
• quantification of fellow students judgments.

17
Writing the Final Draft

• Take a look at instructors recommendation.
• Execute on the proposal.
• Goal First draft for publishable paper
• e.g. ASEM 2007, PICMET 2008, DSI 2008

18
Academic Integrity

• All help that the student has received must be
  documented.
• All materials by prior authors that the student
  has used must be referenced and listed in the
  paper.
• This includes material from the Internet
• Please cite your references using IEEE
  transactions format.

19
Grading Criteria

• The authors are familiar with the existing state
  of knowledge
• The topic is relevant to the scope of this class
• The paper makes a valuable contribution to the
  practice of Decision Making
• The paper is logically technically correct
• The interpretations conclusions are sound
  justified by the results
• The title and abstract are appropriate
• The paper is well presented organized
• The writing style/English is clear
  understandable
• The references are adequate

20
Reports Format

• Times New Roman
• 12 point font size
• Double space
• Single column
• 1 margins
• All reports should be submitted in both hard copy
  and electronic format (email attachment)

21
Class Participation

• Strongly encouraged
• Amounts to 10 of grade
• Consists of thoughtful participation in class
  discussion.
• Requires one to two hours of strategic reading
  before every class.
• Student learn from each others experience.
• Instructor also learns from students.