Title: A model for new product introduction under resource constraints and product interdependence

Authors: Binay Dash; T.T. Narendran; M.S. Gajanand

Addresses: Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai 600036, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: Firms face the challenge of timing product entry decisions. Usually, firms will have a set of product ideas on the bench and a constrained amount of product development resources. Product development happens in multiple stages. Deciding on which products should be processed through the product development stages in a resource constrained environment to help the firm achieve maximum revenue/profit is a challenging problem. The complexity gets further increased if products are inter-related/sequential in terms of resource needs with respect to attributes. This paper presents a mixed integer linear programme (MILP) model which can help an organisation to select on products it wants to launch and feasible launch timings considering multi-stage product development cycle in a resource constrained environment. This paper further proposes an enhancement to the MILP and a branch-n-bound (B&B) algorithm which will help the firm figure out optimum strategies if products are inter-related.

Keywords: product line selection; new product introduction; NPI; product entry timing; product development scheduling; constrained resource allocation; interdependent products; operations research; modelling; resource constraints; product interdependence; mixed integer linear programming; MILP; branch-and-bound.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2016.077685

International Journal of Operational Research, 2016 Vol.26 No.4, pp.473 - 508

Received: 12 Nov 2013
Accepted: 25 May 2014

Published online: 13 Jul 2016 *

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