Question 19.4: Harold’s First Engineering Job—Choosing the Attributes (Base...
Harold’s First Engineering Job—Choosing the Attributes (Based on Example 19.1)
Harold will be graduating soon with a B.S. in metallurgical engineering. He has been job hunting, and he has five job offers. Evaluate the five alternatives using multiattribute decision making.
1. The attributes he is considering are salary, promotion outlook, and city (see Example 19.1).
The alternatives are National Motors in Detroit, American Containerships in San Francisco, National Aerospace in Seattle, Southern Oil in Galveston, and Midwest Forgings in Chicago.
2. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 is bad; 10 is excellent), he has evaluated the alternatives on all three attributes. (Note: Salaries have been adjusted for the local cost of living, since San Francisco is much more expensive and Seattle is somewhat more expensive than the national average.)
3. The Galveston job was dominated by the San Francisco job, since its salary, promotion outlook, and city ratings were respectively, 7, 8, and 7, respectively. Note that a dominated alternative can match, but not beat, the alternative it is dominated by on some attributes. The offered salary in Chicago was too low to meet Harold’s minimal standard or constraint. The ratings for the remaining three alternatives are summarized below.
| Seattle | San Francisco | Detroit | Attribute |
| 9 | 7 | 10 | Salary |
| 9 | 10 | 5 | Promotion outlook |
| 6 | 8 | 3 | City |
4. Harold constructed his scales by judgment and assigned them numerical values in step 2. (This step has already been done.)
5. Harold rates the importance of the attributes by placing 60% of the weight on the salary and splitting the other 40% between the other two criteria.
| Weight | Attribute |
| .60 | Salary |
| .20 | Promotion outlook |
| .20 | City |
6. For an additive model, Harold simply multiplies each performance evaluation by the attribute weight. In other words, each salary evaluation receives a weight of 60%, each evaluation of the promotion outlook receives a weight of 20%, and each evaluation of the city also receives a weight of 20%. These are added together to calculate a total value. Since the Seattle job has the highest additive weighting, it is the best fit for Harold’s requirements.
Detroit = .6(10) + .2(5) + .2(3) = 7.6
San Francisco = .6(7) + .2(10) + .2(8) = 7.8
Seattle = .6(9) + .2(9) + .2(6) = 8.4