A novel extension of Pythagorean fuzzy MULTIMOORA approach for new product development

Abstract

This study explores how to enhance the decision-making processes in the phases of idea generation or alternative selection during the new product development (NPD) process. NPD is acknowledged as the central function of businesses in an increasingly competitive marketplace. In the current era, the highly uncertain and rapidly changing market environment makes the NPD extremely vague and complex. To be able to find a suitable solution to this complexity, the proposed research aims to categorize the decision points in the process of NPD regarding software development and identify the fuzziness elements affecting the process. The goal of a decision-making process is to prioritize several alternatives with respect to some required objectives and to select the best among them. Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) may support reaching a consensus judgment with the collective assessment of Decision Makers (DMs). We introduce a novel evaluation approach for this problem. The proposed approach employs a MULTIMOORA (Multi-objective Optimization by Ratio Analysis plus the Full Multiplicative Form) MCDM technique under Pythagorean Fuzzy Sets (PFSs) objective world environment to cope with an ambiguous environment using Group Decision Making (GDM) setting to shape the decisions. The PFSs have demonstrated their advantages in dealing with vagueness and uncertainty over crisp, fuzzy, or intuitionistic fuzzy sets. Therefore, PFSs can represent the DMs’ judgments and preferences in a better structure, ensuring enhanced decision-making in a group consensus. A case study on gaming software and app development is presented to validate the functionality of the proposed method. The results are compared and assessed with the help of a sensitivity analysis. This research makes a real contribution to the literature by proposing a novel evaluation method to rate and select NPD (gaming software and apps) to deal with the inexactness and vagueness associated with the criteria and alternatives.