Models with More than One Criterion-OR Why Not Build Implementation into the Model

As OR/MS model builders seek to have their efforts influence actual decisions to a greater degree, hope may lie in the developing interest in models of problems including many goals and criteria. More goals usually mean more complex alternatives, especially when aspects of implementation are included. Models of these problems also become more complex, so complex that traditional optimization by selecting one best alternative from a set of mutually exclusive alternatives is simply impossible due to lack of a single supercriterion as well as to human mental capacity limitations.

In addition, lack of knowledge of the values appropriate to multiple goal problems—values that would help resolve conflict among goals by means of a model—suggests judgments of the constituent decision maker be included along with the model in the process of creating and evaluating alternatives as they are constructed by bits, pieces and parts. The result hopefully will reveal to the practicing decision maker what his workable alternatives really are because implementation is not only included but also evaluated.