An optimization model of product line rollover: A case study of the notebook computer industry in Taiwan

As product life cycles become shortened, companies frequently launch new products and discontinue existing ones. Companies with large and complete product lines do not have the extra resources to extend them, so they must plan successful product rollover schemes that launch new products and discard existing ones simultaneously. In previous studies, new product launch schemes and existing product discontinuation strategies have been considered separately (two-phase model). This study modifies the product line design model formulated within a conjoint analysis framework to obtain an optimized model of product line rollover and proposes a genetic algorithm to solve them. The product line rollover procedure in the proposed model is achieved in one phase. The results show that the proposed model takes into account the complementarity between product additions and deletions, which helps companies with complete product lines to formulate better product line rollover schemes.