A Fuzzy Logic Based Model for Concept Selection in the New Product Development Process. Theory and Application.

Concept selection is one of the most critical decision of the new products development process. Because of lack of product information and uncertainty, it is a difficult and complex activity to manage. The aim of this work is to develop a structured model for the selection of ideas, that take into account intuition and expertise of managers and that can be easily adopted by smaller enterprises. Fuzzy logic is used to aggregate model’s results and to obtain, for each idea evaluated, a possible success rate, that considers ambiguity and uncertainty of management assessments. The model was then applied in a project of Product Innovation Management System development, deployed for a group of companies in the textile district of Prato