Product Design Selection With Preference and Attribute Variability for an Implicit Value Function

2005 ◽  
Vol 128 (5) ◽  
pp. 1027-1037 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. K. Maddulapalli ◽  
S. Azarm
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Value Function ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Optimal Designs ◽  
Engineering Product ◽  
Marginal Rate ◽  
Marginal Rate Of Substitution ◽  
Design Alternatives ◽  
Attribute Levels ◽  
Design Selection

An important aspect of engineering product design selection is the inevitable presence of variability in the selection process. There are mainly two types of variability: variability in the preferences of the decision maker (DM) and variability in attribute levels of the design alternatives. We address both kinds of variability in this paper. We first present a method for selection with preference variability alone. Our method is interactive and iterative and assumes only that the preferences of the DM reflect an implicit value function that is differentiable, quasi-concave and non-decreasing with respect to attributes. The DM states his/her preferences with a range (due to the variability) for marginal rate of substitution (MRS) between attributes at a series of trial designs. The method uses the range of MRS preferences to eliminate “dominated designs” and then to find a set of “potentially optimal designs.” We present a payload design selection example to demonstrate and verify our method. Finally, we extend our method for selection with preference variability to the case where the attribute levels of design alternatives also have variability. We assume that the variability in attribute levels can be quantified with a range of attribute levels.

Product Design Selection With Variability in Preferences for an Implicit Value Function

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Maddulapalli ◽  
S. Azarm
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Value Function ◽  
End Users ◽  
Optimal Designs ◽  
Selection Methods ◽  
Marginal Rate ◽  
Marginal Rate Of Substitution ◽  
Design Selection ◽  
Rate Of Substitution

Many existing selection methods require that the Decision Maker (DM) state his/her preferences precisely. However, the DM may not have enough information about the needs of end users thus causing variability in the preferences. To address this problem, we present a method for selection that accounts for variability in the DM’s preferences. Our method is interactive and iterative and assumes only that the preferences of the DM reflect an implicit value function that is quasi-concave and non-decreasing with respect to attributes. Due to the variability, the DM states his/her preferences with a range for Marginal Rate of Substitution (MRS) between attributes at a series of trial designs. The method uses the range of MRS preferences to eliminate “dominated designs” and find a set of “non-eliminated designs”. We present a heuristic to reduce the set of non-eliminated designs and obtain a set of “potentially optimal designs”. The significance of potentially optimal designs is that only one of these designs will be the most preferred for any subset of the range of MRS preferences. We present a payload design selection example to demonstrate and verify that our method indeed finds the set of potentially optimal designs.

Interactive Product Design Selection With an Implicit Value Function

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Maddulapalli ◽  
S. Azarm ◽  
A. Boyars
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Decision Maker ◽  
Trial Design ◽  
Value Function ◽  
Automated Method ◽  
Design Alternatives ◽  
Interactive Product ◽  
Electric Drill ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Design Selection

We present an automated method to aid a Decision Maker (DM) in selecting the ‘most preferred’ from a set of design alternatives. The method assumes that the DM’s preferences reflect an implicit value function that is quasi-concave. The method is iterative, using three approaches in sequence to eliminate lower-value alternatives at each trial design. The method is interactive, with the DM stating preferences in the form of attribute tradeoffs at each trial design. We present an approach for finding a new trial design at each iteration. We provide an example, the design selection for a cordless electric drill, to demonstrate the method.

A Customer-Based Expected Utility Metric for Product Design Selection

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Besharati ◽  
S. Azarm ◽  
A. Farhang-Mehr
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Expected Utility ◽  
Attribute Level ◽  
Purchase Decisions ◽  
Design Alternative ◽  
Design Alternatives ◽  
Product Design Process ◽  
Attribute Levels ◽  
Design Selection

The ability to select a design alternative, from a set of feasible alternatives, that is likely to meet customers’ and designer’s preferences and also account for uncertainties is vital to the success of a product design process. This paper presents a new metric, a Customer-based Expected Utility (CEU) metric, for product design selection that accounts for a range of attribute levels (i.e., the customer range) within which customers make purchase decisions. The metric also accounts for designer’s preferences and uncertainty in achieving a desired attribute level (or a combination of attribute levels). The application of the CEU metric is demonstrated by rank-ordering a set of design alternatives for a cordless power tool. Using this metric, design alternatives that fall outside the customer range will yield a relatively low CEU value, while among those that fall in the customer range, the alternatives with a higher value of the designer’s utility yield a higher value of the CEU metric.

Interactive Product Design Selection With an Implicit Value Function

2005 ◽  
Vol 127 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Maddulapalli ◽  
S. Azarm ◽  
A. Boyars
Keyword(s):  
Trial Design ◽  
Value Function ◽  
Probability Distributions ◽  
Specific Design ◽  
Design Alternatives ◽  
Interactive Product ◽  
Electric Drill ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Design Selection ◽  
The Value Function

We present a new method to aid a decision maker (DM) in selecting the “most preferred” from a set of design alternatives. The method is deterministic and assumes that the DM’s preferences reflect an implicit value function that is quasi-concave. The method is interactive, with the DM stating preferences in the form of attribute tradeoffs at a series of trial designs, each a specific design under consideration. The method is iterative and uses the gradient of the value function obtained from the preferences of the DM to eliminate lower value designs at each trial design. We present an approach for finding a new trial design at each iteration. We provide an example, the design selection for a cordless electric drill, to demonstrate the method. We provide results showing that (within the limit of our experimentation) our method needs only a few iterations to find the most preferred design alternative. Finally we extend our deterministic selection method to account for uncertainty in the attributes when the probability distributions governing the uncertainty are known.

Engineering Product Design Optimization for Retail Channel Acceptance

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Williams ◽  
S. Azarm ◽  
P. K. Kannan
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Latent Class ◽  
Consumer Preferences ◽  
New Product ◽  
Engineering Product ◽  
Retail Channel ◽  
Slotting Allowances ◽  
Engineering Designs ◽  
Design Selection

Significant recent research has focused on the marriage of consumer preferences and engineering design in order to improve profitability. The extant literature has neglected the effects of channel markets which are increasingly prevalent. At the crux of the issue is the fact that channel dominating retailers, like Wal-Mart, have the ability to unilaterally control manufacturer production decisions as gatekeepers to the consumer or market. In this paper, we propose a new methodology that accounts for this power asymmetry. A chance constrained framework is used to model retailer acceptance of possible engineering designs and accounts for the important effect on the profitability of the retailer’s assortment through a latent class estimation of demand from conjoint surveys. Our approach allows the manufacturer to optimize a product design for profitability while reliably ensuring that the product will make it to market by making the retailer more profitable with the addition of the new product. As a demonstrative example, we apply the proposed approach for product design selection in the case of an angle grinder. For this example, we analyze the market and are able to improve expected manufacturer profitability while simultaneously presenting the decision maker with tradeoffs between slotting allowances, market share, and risk of retailer acceptance.

An Integrated Robust Design and Marketing Approach for Product Design Selection Process

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Besharati ◽  
L. Luo ◽  
S. Azarm ◽  
P. K. Kannan
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Design Domain ◽  
Sampling Errors ◽  
Customer Preferences ◽  
Design Alternatives ◽  
Feasibility Robustness ◽  
Design Selection ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Marketing Approach

We present an integrated engineering design and marketing approach to facilitate the selection of a robust set of product designs to carry forward to the prototype stage. Our approach considers variability (i.e., noise or uncertainty) in both (i) engineering design domain, and (ii) customer preferences in marketing domain, to prune a set of design alternatives to a manageable size. In the design domain, our approach evaluates performance and feasibility robustness of a design alternative when there are variations in uncontrollable parameters. The goal of our approach in the design domain is to obtain a set of design alternatives that shows the best possible performance while maintaining feasibility even if the alternatives are subject to applications and environments that are different from their standard laboratory conditions (i.e., nominal parameter values). In the marketing domain, our approach considers the impact of performance variations in different usage situations and conditions on customer preferences and the uncertainties and sampling errors in estimating customer preferences. In addition, competitive products and their positions are considered in pruning the set of design alternatives. We illustrate our approach in the context of the design of a cordless power tool example, which highlights the advantages of using our approach.

Engineering Product Design Optimization for Retail Channel Acceptance

2008 ◽  
Vol 130 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Williams ◽  
S. Azarm ◽  
P. K. Kannan
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Latent Class ◽  
Consumer Preferences ◽  
Marketing Channels ◽  
Engineering Product ◽  
Design Decisions ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Slotting Allowances ◽  
Engineering Designs ◽  
Design Selection

Significant recent research has focused on the marriage of consumer preferences and engineering design in order to improve profitability. The extant literature has neglected the effects of marketing channels, which are becoming increasingly important. At the crux of the issue is the fact that channel dominating retailers, like Wal-Mart, have the ability to unilaterally control manufacturer’s design decisions as gatekeepers to the consumers or market. In this paper, we propose a new methodology that accounts for this power asymmetry. A chance constrained optimization framework is used to model retailer acceptance of possible engineering designs and accounts for the important effect on the profitability of the retailer’s assortment through a latent class estimation of demand from conjoint surveys. Our approach allows the manufacturer to optimize a product design for its own profitability while reliably ensuring that the product will make it to market by making the retailer more profitable with the addition of the new product to the assortment. As a demonstrative example, we apply the proposed approach for product design selection in the case of an angle grinder. For this example, we analyze the market and are able to improve expected manufacturer profitability while simultaneously presenting the designer with trade-offs between slotting allowances, market share, and risk of retailer acceptance.

Product Design Selection Under Uncertainty and With Competitive Advantage

2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Li ◽  
Shapour Azarm
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Evaluation Model ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Alternative Evaluation ◽  
Design Life ◽  
Design Alternative ◽  
Yearly Change ◽  
Design Selection ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract This paper presents an approach wherein product design is viewed as a selection process with two main stages: design alternative generation and design alternative evaluation. The focus of this paper is mainly on a design alternative evaluation model in that designer’s preferences, customers’ preferences, and market competition are accounted for in order to select the best possible design. In the model, uncertainties in the product design life, market size and its yearly change, cost and its yearly change, price, and discount rate are considered. Product design selection of a cordless screwdriver is used as a demonstration example. However, the emphasis in the example is on the approach, and not on the details per se.

Product Design Selection Under Uncertainty and With Competitive Advantage

1999 ◽  
Vol 122 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-418 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Li ◽  
S. Azarm
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Selection Process ◽  
Evaluation Model ◽  
Market Competition ◽  
Alternative Evaluation ◽  
Design Life ◽  
Design Alternative ◽  
Yearly Change ◽  
Design Selection ◽  
Selection Of

This paper presents an approach wherein product design is viewed as a selection process with two main stages: design alternative generation and design alternative evaluation. The focus of this paper is mainly on a design alternative evaluation model in that designer’s preferences, customers’ preferences, and market competition are accounted for in order to select the best possible design. In the model, uncertainties in the product design life, market size and its yearly change, cost and its yearly change, price, and discount rate are considered. Product design selection of a cordless screwdriver is used as a demonstration example. However, the emphasis in the example is on the approach, and not on the details per se. [S1050-0472(00)01504-X]

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