An AHP approach to assess new product development performance: An exploratory study

Abstract

Managing new product development (NPD) becomes crucial for manufacturers particularly those small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) to survive in today’s competitive marketplaces. This paper is geared toward the development of generic self-assessment model for SMEs to determine their performance in NPD practices. It reviews a list of sixteen elements under five decision areas as advocated in literature that affect NPD practices. Incorporated the findings of focus group interviews with industry practitioners and experts, a self-assessment model of NPD performance is devised using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. The conduct of the exploratory study is presented to illustrate how the decision/performance criteria be prioritised and the scoring guidelines be established. It is anticipated that the findings would drive the self-assessment initiatives of NPD in SMEs and provide them with a feasible means to amalgamate strategies and actions. Further research is needed to investigate into the applicability of the model with empirical evidence in industry.