Method of forces for direction finding in interactive multicriterion optimization applications

The main purpose of this paper is to derive, illustrate, and validate a method of direction finding for use in multicriterion interactive optimization applications. A secondary purpose is to consider electronic spreadsheet operation as an instance of interactive multicriterion optimization and to test the new method in a spreadsheet model for aggregate production planning. The method derived here amounts to virtual direct specification of the gradient direction, but does so by an appeal to the simple physical notion of forces applied to the criteria. It is demonstrated that the idea is easily grasped and also gives effective performance in the application tested.The authors are indebted to Professor Carl Langenhop, Mathematics Department, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale for several useful suggestions.