Application of MADM Techniques to Develop Customer Oriented Product

Abstract

This chapter provides an approach to apply a multi-attribute decision making (MADM) method to evaluate the product design alternatives in respect to the customer and designer preferences. Customers employ a variety of heuristics when evaluating product alternatives. Different customer may have different choices for the particular product out of set of multi attribute alternatives of different brands or within the same brand also. Product design selection can be considered as a complex multi-attribute decision problem since the expectations differ from customer’s as well as designer’s point of view. Therefore, a proper mechanism is to be applied to decide on the most suitable product for the customer. MADM methods provide more scientific way to evaluate and select the best product design alternative. In this chapter, an example of personal data assistant (PDA) selection is considered as complex MADM problem. The alternatives of personal data assistant are evaluated using different MADM methods. The alternative are ranked on the basis of composite score ‘Product Design Selection Index’, PDSI (Pi). The ranking provided by these various methods is then compared. A novel quantitative approach is proposed for the comparison of alternatives in case of conflict in ranking.