Allocating R&D resources using a fuzzy TOPSIS approach

Effectively allocating R&D resources to potential new products under development is an important issue for a company. To resolve this problem, this work suggests a fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) model. The proposed model considers quantitative and qualitative criteria as well as the different importance of criteria in the evaluation process for the potential new products. The ranking approach of the mean of removals is applied to defuzzify all the fuzzy weighted ratings for developing positive-ideal and negative-ideal solutions in order to complete the model. Finally, a numerical example demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed model.