FAYETTEVILLE -- Greg Parnell, visiting professor of industrial engineering, received a Best Paper Award at the International Symposium of the International Council on Systems Engineering, or INCOSE, in July.  Three best paper awards were given for over 100 papers.

Parnell authored the paper along with Matthew Cilli, a doctoral student at the Stevens Institute of Technology and Dennis Buede, president of Innovative Decisions, Inc. In the paper, which is entitled “Tradeoff Study Cascading Mistakes of Omission and Commission,” the researchers looked at factors that compromise tradeoff studies.

Tradeoff studies are a critical tool to provide information to support decision making for discipline engineers, systems engineers, and program managers throughout the system life cycle. Unfortunately, the quality of tradeoff studies is typically inconsistent between organizations and within organizations. The researchers identified the most common tradeoff study mistakes: omission and commission.  The mistakes of omission are errors made by not doing the right things. The mistakes of commission are errors made by doing the right things the wrong way. In addition, they showed how these mistakes can cascade into multiple mistakes with significant consequences to the decision makers, stakeholders, and the system. The researchers concluded that by using INCOSE’s Decision Management Process and avoiding these mistakes, they could increase the quality of the tradeoff study and avoid adverse consequences.