1998 Volume 6 Issue 2 Pages 23-46
Product development (PD) needs to consider such characteristics as multi-goals and qualitative evaluation, cost constraint and combinatorial structure of development alternatives. The term cost-performance used so far has been mainly emphasizing ex post facto the improvement in single function with respect to cost. The use of cost-performance curve (CPC), including multiple and qualitative criteria and under varied cost constraints, will be effective for better PD decision making.
This paper develops an extended model of CPC for selecting combinatorial alternative (CA) in PD so as to maximize total performance under cost constraint. The characteristics of this model lie in the following points: target sales quantity of product is newly introduced; the joint use of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Enumeration Method (EM) is attempted throughout this study to treat with more general cases including dependent alternatives among functional units; some practical viewpoints, which are useful to other PD problems, are presented through the application of copying machine. The results of analyses show that the introduction of sales quantity has an important influence on CPC and thus on optimal selection of CA, and it is also considered to be important in developing further extended PD models.
