A DEA benchmarking methodology for project planning and management of new product development under decentralized profit-center business model

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, technology-driven organizations widely adopt decentralized profit-center business model. In order to complete a series of new product development (NPD) activities on time and within budgetary constraints, the NPD managers need an objective benchmarking approach to gain accurate perception on the relations of resource allocations, profits, costs and times for each NPD activity. Thus, this study employs the data envelopment analysis (DEA) concept to put forward a benchmarking planning and management methodology to optimize the NPD activities within a profit center for achieving the goal of maximal profit and satisfying the resource constraints. By applying the real case of the electric motor scooter NPD project, this research demonstrates the method’s real case application with superior results, comparing to other existing approaches. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.