Application of Comprehensive Evaluation in New-Product-Development Evaluation: The Case of Landscape-Architectural Outdoor Wooden Furnishing

Successful new product development (NPD) is critical for modern outdoor wooden furnishing (OWF) manufacturing companies to achieve competitive success, since current users have the serious requirements of aesthetics, materials and environmental quality. Identifying the competitive performance of a product in development is an effective means to minimize the risk of failure. However, the literature reviews of the comprehensive evaluation (CE) model for OWF NPD are very rare. In this study, the CE method that applies three steps, which include constructing evaluation criteria, establishing a trapezoidal fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and proposing a CE model is applied to assess the performance of a product in development and to minimize the risk of product failure in the market. The study aims to propose a CE approach for OWF NDP, which utilizes multiple methods that incorporate a literature review, questionnaire, Delphi method and fuzzy trapezoidal AHP. Finally, an integrated CE model is proposed to measure the competitive performance of NPD. A case study of a series of OWF in Harbin Pingfang Park, China is presented to illustrate the feasibility of the model. The result demonstrates that the proposed method predicts the performance of a product in development objectively and comprehensively. This evaluation method, being an assessment tool, can help designers and decision makers make better decisions and will predict the competitive performance of a product so as to reduce the risk of economic losses, not merely depending on previous experience and personal expectation.