Multivariate optimisation for procurement of emergency services equipment – Teams of the best or the best of teams?

It is shown that the design of some inventory structures such as critical protective items for local emergency response elements, or selection of some types of sports team (e.g. baseball, cricket), is appropriately formulated as the selection of an optimal set of options over multiple criteria. This paper examines the problem of defining what might constitute optimum sets under such conditions. Noting that options may be characterised with data of various scale types, the paper introduces a number of different policies for optimality appropriate to the different scale types, and derives closed expressions that implement the various policies. It is shown that simply choosing the best individual options to construct a preferred team is likely to be sub-optimal particularly if the policy is hard to meet. This result is shown to be robust over data structures and data scale types. Managerial implications are briefly considered.