Improving Group Decision Making in Risk Assessment of New Product Design under Uncertainties: An Evidential Reasoning Based Preference Programming Approach

Description

Most new product design (NPD) tasks are complex multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) problems that involve a group of cross-functional experts. Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is a proactive methodology used by the NPD group in assessing the potential product risks at the early NPD stage. However, the use of FMEA is limited by its inferiority in handling uncertainties and group-based decisions.Given a group decision problem in assessing potential product risks at an early NPD stage, which has various types of information with both probabilistic and fuzzy uncertainties, this project aims to develop a novel Evidential Reasoning (ER) based Preference Programming (PP) methodology to support interactive global sensitivity analysis for this group MCDA problem under uncertainty. The developed methodology will be incorporated in the FMEA group decision process and validated in assessing the potential product risks in a Hong Kong electronics/electrical product manufacturer.