Article ID: | iaor20013731 |
Country: | Netherlands |
Volume: | 128 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 58 |
End Page Number: | 73 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2001 |
Journal: | European Journal of Operational Research |
Authors: | McMullen Patrick R., Tarasewich Peter |
Keywords: | heuristics |
Products can be improved by integrating multiple viewpoints during the design process. A model has been developed that uses conjoint data from consumers and designers and optimizes a product design based on the total share-of-choices. Because the problem becomes very difficult to solve as size increases, a heuristic is developed, based on pruning techniques, to solve the problem to near-optimality in a shorter period of time as compared to complete enumeration. The performance of the heuristic is demonstrated through the use of test data and by comparison to a genetic algorithm based heuristic and Tabu search. Structural results for the heuristic are also provided.