The task in building a DSS is like the job any other engineer confronts when faced with new technologies and new materials.  Suppose that a critical step in building an airliner once required assembling two parts in an awkward location, demanding a special wrench that could reach that location and apply the proper torque.  If you had the job of designing that wrench, it would be easy to think of tightening the nut as your goal.

It would take a higher-level view to envision the goal as one of holding those two parts together.  As new generations of adhesives became available, the engineer with this view would consider them while the “nut tightener” engineer would not.

But only the highest level of thinking would recall that the goal is to transmit a force or a bending moment through the structure, with the assembly of these two parts being merely a means to that end.  If new materials made it practical to make a one-piece part to do the job, the question of how to fasten the two parts disappears.

*Adapted from  P. Coffee, “Value Tools by their Decision Making Power,” PC Week, Volume 12, Number 27, July 10, 1995, p. 27.