Richard--
If you check out the SmartOrg website, www.smartorg.com, you will see
several one-page case studies of real companies applying decision analysis
that we developed for marketing purposes. Additionally, we have two
streaming presentations, one from HP and one from Chevron on their
applications of decision analysis.
I have been involved in hundreds of practical applications of Decision
Analysis to corporate problems over the last ten years or so. My
conclusion is that "Decision Analysis" is dissapearing, in that its methods
are becoming embedded into the skillsets and solution methods for solving
problems. Applications seem to fall into two broad categories: In the
first category, a decision analyst (often a consultant) comes in and
deploys the tool to help a company solve a problem. For example, the
strategic direction of a company, a major investment choice, or to resolve
some underlying conflict. In the second category, decision analysis
approaches are built into the ordinary business processes of a company.
For example, Chevron's Heavy Oil R&D portfolio process is based on
assessment of uncertainty around opportunities, the use of probability of
express uncertainty, and expected value calculations.
Best Regards,
David
-------------------------------------
David Matheson
President & CEO
SmartOrg, Inc.
855 Oak Grove, Suite 202
Menlo Park, CA 94025
650-470-0180
www.smartorg.com
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|---------+---------------------------->
| | "Agosta, John M" |
| | <[EMAIL PROTECTED]|
| | tel.com> |
| | |
| | 04/18/2006 09:46 |
| | AM |
|---------+---------------------------->
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|
|
| To: "Kathryn Blackmond Laskey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Kevin Van
Horn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Rich" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> |
| cc: <uai@engr.orst.edu>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Greg Parnell"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> |
| Subject: RE: [UAI] Who uses Decision Analysis?
|
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
Richard -
If no one has yet mentioned the west coast school of decision analysis,
here's a summary. It spawned a small industry of practitioners, most
active in the 80-90's. The firms trace back to Stanford Research
Institute's Decision Analysis Group, founded in 1968 (?), as an adjunct
to the Engineering-Economic Systems Dept (EES) at Stanford. Ron
Howard's work contributed to the foundations. James Matheson and Carl
Spetzler were instrumental in creating the practice, as were others. As
students we gained familiarity with the practice through the "red book:"
Howard, R.A., Matheson, J. E., "Readings in Decision Analysis" (Menlo
Park CA: SRI 1977).
SRI maintains archives. Someday it will be interesting for a scholar to
retrieve them and write the early history of this group.
Just before I joined EES, in 1981, the Group left SRI to enter private
consulting. The "second generation" of decision analysts formed several
independent firms located near Stanford: "Decision Focus", "Applied
Decision Analysis" and "Strategic Decisions Group" among them. Ron,
James and Carl were all at SDG. None of these firms exist in the form
they were during their heyday, though there is a successor firm that
keeps the SDG name. A few new groups have followed in recent years. In
the drug industry, PharSight, Inc. in Mountain View, had (and still
has?) a traditional decision analysis team. Another is SmartOrg, at
www.smartorg.com.
There is a Decision Analysis Society associated with INFORMS that
publishes a journal under that name where some of the current DA work is
tracked. See the Dec 2005 issue for a retrospective. Greg Parnell at
West Point is President.
Of course there are many others I don't have space to mention, and
others who can fill in details, or correct my impressions of the
history.
John Mark Agosta o) 408 765-0429
Machine Learning m) 650 465-4707
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Kathryn Blackmond Laskey
Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2006 1:01 PM
To: Kathryn Blackmond Laskey; Kevin Van Horn; Rich
Cc: uai@engr.orst.edu
Subject: Re: [UAI] Who uses Decision Analysis?
As an added note, we teach decision and risk analysis in our systems
engineering and operations research programs at George Mason
University. The majority of our students are working professionals,
and many of them apply the techniques in their professional lives.
I'm not aware of everything they do at work, but sometimes they
choose work-related topics for class projects. As just one example,
a few years ago a student who worked for a company that makes
people-movers for airports developed a decision support system that
elicited information to construct a multi-attribute utility function,
and provided recommendations for which kind of people-mover system an
airport should install. I believe the system was used by her company.
Among those who have studied decision analysis, it's pretty widely
used. I know many people who say that although they rarely perform a
full-blown quantitative decision analysis, they find the approach to
problem structuring quite useful. In other words, their
qualititative heuristics for making decisions follow a
decision-analytic approach.
Kathryn Laskey
At 3:57 PM -0400 4/14/06, Kathryn Blackmond Laskey wrote:
>Please also see the web site of Innovative Decisions, Inc.
>
>On that web site, you can find a long list of publications that
>includes numerous journal and conference papers, book chapters, and
>books. Many of the principals at Innovative Decisions have been
>doing decision analysis since the 70's, and some of the publications
>on the list date back to that time, while others were published
>within the past few months or are in press.
>
>The web site also advertises a chapter on risk management in the
>recently published Homeland Security Handbook.
>
>Kathryn Laskey
>
>
>At 7:24 PM -0700 3/31/06, Kevin Van Horn wrote:
>>The fact that Lumina Decision Systems (lumina.com), Decisioneering
>>(decisioneering.com), Palisade (www.palisade.com), TreeAge Software
>>(www.treeage.com), and other companies selling decision analysis
>>software are still in business, and have been for many years, is
>>pretty good evidence that corporate America does use decision
>>analysis. You can probably find some case studies on their websites.
>>
>>On Mar 29, 2006, at 7:31 AM, Rich wrote:
>>
>>> After describing decision analysis to my class recently, a student
>>> actually applied it on his job. A question then came up. Where has
it
>>> been successfully applied in real life problems? Although it's
been
>>> around my whole life (at least since Jimmy Savage's book in 1954),
I
>>> actually am aware of few real applications. There are a lot of
>>> publications that discuss problems that look real (e.g. Clemen's
>>> book), but is any of this real? Did Penzoil really analyze the
>>> problem as Clemen describes? Of course sitting in my `ivory tower'
I
>>> would not know what goes on in corporate America, etc. So I would
be
>>> curious to learn of any real applications of decision analysis,
>>> especially ones that are published. This could be in an expert
system
>>> (that people use) or to make a one time decision.
>>> Thanks,
>>> Rich
>>>
>>> Richard E. Neapolitan
>>> Professor and Chair of Computer Science
>>> Northeastern Illinois University
>>> 5500 N. St. Louis
>>> Chicago, Illinois 60625
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
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