Judgmental evaluation of facility plans through analysis of subjectivity

This paper addresses the top management problem of facility planning. Often the top management of a firm makes decisions affecting facility plans, prior to the commencement of engineering design activity on the plans. The decisions made by top management are judgmental in nature. It is, therefore, important to recognize the limitations of the process of human judgment. In this paper, a procedure is described to aid the facility planning function, taking into account the process of human judgment. A case study is provided to illustrate how the procedure can be used both for research and clinical purposes. The results of the case study suggest that the theory of human judgment and interactive computer graphics offers tools to aid top managers' understanding of their own and their colleagues' judgment process, enabling them to improve their own judgmental consistency and to move toward mutual consensus in a group decision-making situation. These tools also facilitate the decision makers' understanding and acceptance of models designed to serve as decision aids.