A mathematical model at the detailed design phase in the 3DCE new product development

Recent business environment development forces companies to speed up their new product development (NPD)
cycle. The three-dimensional concurrent engineering (3DCE) offers chances to accelerate the process of new
product development. However, to date there has been no formal guidelines for 3DCE NPD. This study tries to
relate the imperative of concurrency into the stage-gate NPD, especially at the detailed design phase, in which
the NPD team is presumed to conduct the decisions on product detailed specifications and production process
design simultaneously. A mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) mathematical model was developed to
optimize operational manufacturing profit. The main features of the model are to select the best components
from available alternative components, to take make-or-buy decision of the components, and to select its sup-
pliers. In addition, the total quality of the components was evaluated and then compared to an expected total
quality obtained from the competitors’ product or ideal expectation of the NPD team. A case from a leather bag
company was used to demonstrate the model. In this case, sixteen components from 24 alternative components
and seven suppliers for a new leather bag product case had to be decided and it was solved by the model. The
sensitivity analysis provided evidence of model validity. Finally, a conclusion with several potential future works
is provided