Ahmet Bengoz

Date of Award

3-22-2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Operational Sciences

First Advisor

Jeffery D. Weir, PhD.

Abstract

In its 60-year history, there have been many published documents in the literature about goal programming (GP), but contributions to the literature are still needed. This research intends to add to the literature on goal-programming models by discussing one of the key assumptions of GP regarding linearity, and by discussing some of the issues regarding incommensurability (difference in data types) and weighting. GP requires an interaction between the decision maker (DM) and the analyst to ensure that the model reflects the DM's preferences. However, it may be difficult for them to interact if the mathematical model is very large and complex and includes many decision and deviation variables. Hence, we want a model that converts the DM's qualitative values into quantitative ones and visualizes them. We use value-focused thinking (VFT) to overcome the difficulties previously mentioned by using it as a constraint in GP formulations. The use of the model is demonstrated through a case study of the Turkish Air Force Flying Hour Program, which is a multi-criteria optimization problem. We use VFT to specify the values of the decision maker for a given multi-objective decision problem, and then move it forward into a multi-criteria decision making problem as a constraint. The results demonstrate the computational performance, efficiency, and robustness of the methodology.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-OR-MS-ENS-12-01

DTIC Accession Number

ADA559614

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