New product go/no-go evaluation at the front end: a fuzzy linguistic approach

The screening of a new product concept is perhaps the most critical activity in new product development (NPD), yet such screening is often not adequately performed. Limited by both the nature and the timing of NPD, new product screening is associated with uncertainty and complexity. This paper presents and discusses an actual illustration of a new product screening analysis performed in the development of a new machining center. Since subjective considerations such as competitive advantage in the market, product superiority, technological appropriateness, and product risk were relevant to the go/no-go decision, a fuzzy logic approach was adopted. In this approach, measurements are described subjectively by linguistic terms, while success attributes are weighted by their corresponding importance using fuzzy values. The fuzzy logic-based screening model can efficiently aid managers in dealing with both ambiguity and complexity in product screening decisions.