Product Design Evaluation Method Using Consensus Measurement, Network Analysis, and AHP

Abstract

Product evaluation practices spread throughout from initial creative stages to final products before communicating them to the market. They emphasize on assessing design alternatives against specified criteria, which can help promote design process, ensure design quality, and diminish design risk before making a decision. However, how to identify and improve the reliability of product evaluation opinions toward design alternatives has an important role in adding additional insurance and reducing uncertainty to successful product design. Aiming at this issue, this study employs a consensus model by integrating network analysis and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. The consensus model is constructed to measure the consistency of evaluators’ preferences and determine the rounds of evaluation. Complex network theory is integrated into the product evaluation process for network analysis of evaluators’ opinions, which can help determine evaluators’ weights in each evaluation round dynamically by changing the network topology. To obtain the weight of product evaluation indices, the AHP method is applied to avoid subjectivity given by evaluators. The process of the proposed method is presented, and the details are illustrated using a product evaluation example. The case study demonstrates that the proposed method is promising for improving the consensus level of evaluators’ opinions, reducing the influence of subjectivity, and finally improving the quality of design decision-making.

Morphological Design of a Bicycle Propulsion Component Using the Hierarchical Analysis Process (AHP)

“…By charging the system with a negative rotational direction and having the option to choose when to charge it, one gear is eliminated since the rotation of wheel (11) is in the same direction as the forward movement. Therefore, connecting this wheel to a fixed gear (12) on the rear wheel through a chain (13) allows for the entire discharge to be transmitted to the rear wheel.…”

“…When the user presses another brake lever for the sprockets (5), a double bearing system (13) moves thanks to the wire ropes that connect it to the lever. This displacement pulls on a wire rope connected to the double bearing (13) and to the cam (15). The rotation of the cam exerts pressure on the shoe ( 16), thus stopping the rotation of the wheel ( 5) with respect to the axis that joins them.…”

“…The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a decision-making tool [12] that allows for analysing and comparing different options based on a set of criteria. This technique is often used in product design to help identify the most important criteria and to evaluate how well different design alternatives meet those criteria [13]. Due to its ability to structure complex problems into hierarchies and facilitate systematic comparison and evaluation of criteria and alternatives, by breaking down a problem into levels and sublevels, AHP enables decision-makers to carefully analyse and weigh different factors and considerations.…”

Construction of an Integrated Framework for Complex Product Design Manufacturing and Service Based on Reliability Data

“…Design reliability is the basis of manufacturing reliability and service reliability of complex products. Combined with the reliability data of manufacturing and operation and maintenance of complex products, a multi-factor reliability design scheme improvement method is constructed from multiple factors, such as manufacturing state, operation state and service state of key design features of complex products, and the factors affecting the reliability of complex product design and the continuous innovation path to improve the reliability design to realize the reliability design of complex products are comprehensively elaborated [53]. On this basis, a tool set can be constructed to control and evaluate the reliability design of complex products using gray comprehensive evaluation, gray fuzzy theory, multi-factor analysis, particle swarm algorithm and high-acceleration stress screening, so as to meet customer needs of innovative design solutions for complex products with high reliability [54].…”