| Prior to Milestone A, the Department of Defense (DoD) requires that service sponsors conduct an Analysis of Alternatives (AoA), an analytical comparison of multiple alternatives, to be completed prior to committing and investing costly resources to one project or decision. Despite this requirement, sponsors will circumvent or dilute the process in an effort to save money or schedule, and specific requirements are proposed that can effectively eliminate all but the preselected alternatives. This research focuses on identifying decision aiding methods which can lead to the selection of specific criteria that are key performance drivers thus enabling an informed selection of the enabling technology. This work defines the enabling technology as the sub-system which presents the most risk within the system design. After a thorough literature review of available Multi Criteria Decision Making methods, a case study example is presented demonstrating the selection of the enabling technology of a Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) system. Using subjective criteria in the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is shown to successfully account for tacit knowledge of expert practitioners. |
