A decision support formulation for design teams: A study in preference aggregation and handling unequal group members

Supporting the decision of a group in engineering design is a challenging and complicated problem when issues like consensus, consistency, conflict, and compromise must be taken into account. In this paper, we present two developments extending the Group Hypothetical Equivalents and Inequivalents Method (Group-HEIM) and making it applicable to new classes of group decision problems. The first extension focuses on handling forms of value functions other than the traditional L-1-norm. The second extension focuses on updating the formulation to place unequal importance on the preferences of the group members. Typically, there are some group members whose experience, education, and/or knowledge makes their input more important. The formulation presented in this paper allows team leaders to emphasize the input from certain group members. Illustration and validation of the developments are presented using a vehicle selection problem. Data from twelve engineering design teams is used to demonstrate the application of the method.