A Hierarchical Group Decision-Making Approach for New Product Selection in a Fuzzy Environment

作者：Mousavi S Meysam^*; Torabi S Ali; Tavakkoli Moghaddam Reza

来源：Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering, 2013, 38(11): 3233-3248.

DOI：10.1007/s13369-012-0430-z

• Product development
• New idea selection
• Fuzzy sets
• Multiple attribute group decision-making

Selecting the most appropriate new product(s) is regarded as a critical decision impacting the economic success of manufacturing companies. In the new product development process, there are different evaluation attributes typically considered by a group of experts, which often can be structured in a multiple level hierarchy. The purpose of this paper is to provide a new hybrid hierarchical multiple attribute group decision-making approach for evaluating and selecting new product ideas in a fuzzy environment. A hierarchical weighting method is first applied to assess the attributes' weights by using pair-wise comparisons. This method reduces the number of required pair-wise comparisons effectively. Then, to rank the new product ideas, a fuzzy extension of the classical compromise solution method, namely, VIKOR, is proposed. This method is based upon a simple parameterized distance metric along with a new fuzzy group aggregation approach in order to calculate the ranking index of each alternative by using the triangular fuzzy numbers. Furthermore, a case study in a home appliance manufacturer is provided to illustrate the proposed hybrid approach and demonstrate its applicability. Finally, concluding remarks and future research directions are reported.

• 出版日期2013-11