A fuzzy group-preferences analysis method for new-product development

This paper reports a new idea-screening method for new product development (NPD) with a group of decision makers having imprecise, inconsistent and uncertain preferences. The traditional NPD analysis method determines the solution using the membership function of fuzzy sets which cannot treat negative evidence. The advantage of vague sets, with the capability of representing negative evidence, is that they support the decision makers with the ability of modeling uncertain opinions. In this paper, we present a new method for new-product screening in the NPD process by relaxing a number of assumptions so that imprecise, inconsistent and uncertain ratings can be considered. In addition, a new similarity measure for vague sets is introduced to produce a ratings aggregation for a group of decision makers. Numerical illustrations show that the proposed model can outperform conventional fuzzy methods. It is able to provide decision makers (DMs) with consistent information and to model situations where vague and ill-defined information exist in the decision process. 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.