A decision support system for product design selection: A generalized purchase modeling approach

Selection of a final design for a new product that is to be introduced in the market is a very critical step in the new product development process. The selection needs to consider three factors of importance: anticipated market demand for the design, designers' preferences, and uncertainty in achieving predicted design attribute levels under different usage conditions and situations. We propose a generalized purchase modeling approach that considers all of the above factors and develop a customer based expected utility metric that forms the basis for a Decision Support System (DSS) for supporting the selection in product design. We illustrate the modeling approach and the use of DSS with the help of a case example that highlights the utility of the proposed DSS.