A key question for the suitability of the FACTORFINDER-Software is the character of the target criterion that represents the quality of alternatives. This criterion must have exactly one threshold which differentiates acceptable from inacceptable alternatives. Moreover, there must be several acceptable variants so there is a base for evaluation.
The object of analysis has to put high demands on whether a variant can count as acceptable or not. Consequently, an alternative combined of randomly selected factors is most likely of inacceptable quality. If there were a majority of acceptable alternatives, any randomly generated variant would be most likely of acceptable success and any analysis would be superfluous.
If there are differences in quality between acceptable alternatives, the applicability of the FACTORFINDER-Software is questionable: As long the threshold clearly marks a fundamental difference between acceptable and inacceptable variants and those differences between acceptable variants are slight and have little importance, using the FACTORFINDER-Software is adequate and will abstract from those slight differences.
If the differences between acceptable variants are too important to be ignored, other analytical tools should be consulted. Other instruments make use of the information that is expressed by those differences between the alternatives.
Whenever the non-monotonic character of the target criterion dominates the picture using the FACTORFINDER-Procedure is required. Other approaches have weaknesses in analysing acceptable variants with no ranking in between. Having said this, the FACTORFINDER-Software does not replace existing analytical tools but complements our tool box and helps when other appraoches run into difficulties.