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TopAirline Carry-On Decision Example
There exists at least one very common real world situation in which the solution to this crisp implementation of a fuzzy approximate requirement can be made without providing the opportunity for objecting. As we shall see this solution provides a paradigmatic solution to these kinds of situations where we require a crisp decision to an imprecise fuzzy requirement residing in the decision-makers mind. That is, this involves an objective evaluation of subjective judgments (Siegel and Wu, 2003).
The specific situation considered involves the airline carry-on bag decision. An airline gate agent makes the decision about allowing a person to carry a bag onto the plane if, the bag is not too big. In order to help implement this decision the airlines have a carry-on bag “sizer.” If the bag fits into the sizer box, then it can be carried onto the plane. Such an airline bag sizer represents a crisp target requirement; if the bag fits into the sizer, then “okay”, while if it doesn't fit into the box it is not permitted to take the bag on board. However, the reality of the requirement is much softer; it is “to get on the plane the bag should not be much larger than the airline sizer.” In this situation, a gate agent's subjective fuzzy definition of the concept “not much bigger” is implemented by their decision as to whether or not to request the passenger to “please place your bag in the sizer.” Here if the agent deems the bag to be not much bigger than the sizer, they wouldn't request sizing and the bag goes on the plane. On the other hand, if they feel that the bag is too big, they will have it sized, and if the bag indeed does not fit in the box, it will be rejected by this crisp test without any grounds for objection. We further note the decision to ask the person to size their bag is also non-controversial as the agent has the legal right to request any passenger to size their carry-on bag. In Figure 1 we show a schematic view of this situation.