Analytic network process-based model for selecting an optimal product design solution with zero–one goal programming

Abstract

Successive new product development is essential to ensure continual growth of a company. However, any wrong decision-making may cause a catastrophe before the company could benefit from it. Consequently, selecting an appropriate design solution by the product development team or upper management that meets the broad interest of a company has become an important part of new product development. In this paper, we propose a systematic methodology that integrates analytic network process (ANP) and zero–one goal programming (ZOGP) in order to select an optimal product design solution. Before introducing the ANP and ZOGP methods, the fuzzy Delphi method is first adopted to identify the essential factors that have influences on the selection results. Followed by the ANP method, which is used to determine the weights of the proposed product design alternatives, a mathematical ZOGP model is built to incorporate multiple objectives in order to reach the optimal solution. Finally, the MP3 player product design project is used as an empirical example to illustrate the overall decision procedure and to examine the effectiveness of our proposed new model.