Multicriteria decision making in design of printed wire boards

This paper presents an application of multicriteria decision making in system level design of printed wire boards. The main decision variable is the number of signal layers, and the criteria being considered are the cost, electrical performance, and reliability. The weighting method is first applied to find the most satisfactory solution. In the numerical example a complete description of the solution is given in terms of the weights or importance factors. The numerical results also show the stability of the solution. The computations are then repeated by applying compromise programming and the Nash solution concept. In the case of compromise programming the l/sub 1/,l/sub 2/, and l/sub /spl infin// norms are used. The numerical results obtained by the different methods are compared.