Decision area

In a broad-band contractor briefing to the committee on July 28, 2000, the following 10 decision areas were identified for the modified baseline process (U.S. Army, 2000d) ... 

The goal of providing a decision area in decision making process is for the convenience of choosing the best maintenance method corresponding to the fault mode. As the majority of less important issues (such as simple function degradation) have been eliminated in the filter area, analysis in the decision area will be more specific and purposeful by contrast with the traditional RCM. Based on the RBI-based analysis of pipelines, different maintenance plans are worked out for pipelines... 

They proposed that logistics complexity is a driver to define the way a company manages and emphasizes the different supply chain objectives and decision areas, and based on this, a contingency approach for supply chain management is required, where different contextual conditions drive the way the supply chain choices are made and management activities are performed, as opposed to a best practice approach where there would be some universally applicable principles that would be appropriate regardless of the particular conditions under study. 

Supplier strategic collaboration activities also impact supply chain performance in the Source decision area. These activities include electronic ordering and supplier-managed inventory. In addition, the presence of on-site employees of key suppliers facilitates strategic supplier collaboration activities that enhance overall supply chain performance. 

UCLA Evaluation Model as defined by UCLA— the process of ascertaining the decision areas of concern, selecting appropriate information, and collecting and analyzing information in order to report summary data useful to decision-makers in selecting among alternatives. ... 

After having explained the variability of the morphological box, the layout will be briefly explained. The morphological box consists of one descriptive part and three decision areas such as the customer area, manufacturing area, and supplier area as depicted on the left hand side in Figs. 1.16 and 1.17. 

The second decision area, the manufacturing area, implies dimensions containing topics concerned with the products. Thus, the number of modules for each product is recorded as well as whether the modules are categorized as noncritical or strategic exploit. Moreover, the process type is recorded (make-to-stock, make-to-order, or engineer-to-order) and it is decided where the decoupling point shall be positioned within the value chain. 

Standardisation of equipment items is an area for potential cost savings, both in terms of capital expenditure (capex) and operating expenditure (opex), and is a decision which should be taken In consultation with the production operations department at the FDP stage. Standardisation can be applied to equipment items ranging from drilling platforms to valves. The benefits of standardisation are ... 

The result of the Back-to-Basics series is an accumulation of some 50 separate but interrelated expositions of mass spectrometric principles and apparatus. Some areas of mass spectrometry, such as ion cyclotron resonance and ion trap instruments, have not been covered except for passing references. This decision has not been due to any bias by the authors or Micromass but simply reflects the large amount of writing that had to be done and the needs of the greatest proportion of users. 

The characteristics of a powder that determine its apparent density are rather complex, but some general statements with respect to powder variables and their effect on the density of the loose powder can be made. (/) The smaller the particles, the greater the specific surface area of the powder. This increases the friction between the particles and lowers the apparent density but enhances the rate of sintering. (2) Powders having very irregular-shaped particles are usually characterized by a lower apparent density than more regular or spherical ones. This is shown in Table 4 for three different types of copper powders having identical particle size distribution but different particle shape. These data illustrate the decisive influence of particle shape on apparent density. (J) In any mixture of coarse and fine powder particles, an optimum mixture results in maximum apparent density. This optimum mixture is reached when the fine particles fill the voids between the coarse particles. 

Documentation abstracts, useful as they are, may also prove inadequate for final decisions, which would make it necessary for the searcher to obtain and examine copies of full patent specifications. Although the increasing availabihty of sets of full specifications on CD-ROM at modest cost is making it easier for searchers to have in their collections copies of those specifications they might need to consult, the necessity to go beyond computer output, whether to abstracts or full specifications, is stiU one of the bottlenecks of computer searching, and therefore an area in which significant new developments are hoped for. 

A new facihty should be located ia an area that is economically suitable (see Plant location). At the same time, the social, environmental, and aesthetic effects must be considered. These decisions are part of land-use pohcies. As of this writing (1996), there is no national land-use program. However, there are certain laws that cover portions of this decision-making process and some states have such programs. 

Our discussion to this point has been confined to those areas in which the governing laws are well known. However, in many areas, information on the governing laws is lacking. Interest in the application of statistical methods to all types of problems has grown rapidly since World War II. Broadly speaking, statistical methods may be of use whenever conclusions are to be drawn or decisions made on the basis of experimental evidence. Since statistics could be defined as the technology of the scientific method, it is primarily concerned with the first two aspec ts of the method, namely, the performance of experiments and the drawing of conclusions from experiments. Traditionally the field is divided into two areas ... 

Jui y trials represent a form of decision making. In statistics, an analogous procedure for making decisions falls into an area of statistical inference called hypothesis testing. 

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