Deploying decision criteria in a cyclical decision process for the product planning phase

During the planning process of future products or the future product portfolio, ideas for future market opportunities are generated and within a parallel decision process, the best ones are selected. This paper presents a method for the decision process during that product planning process. The focus is on the selection and weighting of the decision criteria. The method is applicable for planning processes with reoccurring decision steps. Therefore a block model is introduced: in every decision step a new block, compromising a set of criteria is added to the existing blocks and thus more and more integrated decisions can be made about the planning alternatives. Based on that the criteria are weighted consecutively in order to assure consistency between the different decision steps. Therefore we show rules for deriving the weighting factors of decision criteria in that additive decision process.