On process planning with multiple agents: environmentally conscious decisions among feasible process plans

For many problems involving the choice of a process plan from among those generated by a process planner with multiple agents, the formulation and calculation of an objective function based on utilities or preferences is unnecessary as well as time-consuming and likely to introduce errors or inaccuracies into the analysis. Instead, the decision can and should be based on cost minimization using price data which is readily available to the firm. This paper focuses on the case of tradeoffs among alternative feasible process plans with different environmental effects.