Access Type

Open Access Dissertation

Date of Award

January 2016

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

First Advisor

Leslie Monplaisir

Abstract

Selecting the right technology is one of the most important and challenging decisions in new product development (NPD) process that can greatly affect all downstream design activities which have a great impact on product success in the market place. Although new technologies may bring more competitive advantage by offering higher performance to price, they also make the NPD process more risky and challenging. We model the technology selection problem of a firm that is defining its new product in the presence of the technology uncertainty. At each review stage, firm has the options: select and commit to any technology alternatives or postpone this decision to the next review stage in order to gather more information. Delays in making technology decisions are likely to increase NPD cycle time by shifting forward downstream activities and ultimately may impose an increased development cost and profit loss for the firm. Our Analysis describes the optimal strategies for this problem and investigate the impact of technological and market uncertainty as well as time trade-offs on technology selection problem in NPD.

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