Concept Evaluation - Definition & Importance
What is Concept Evaluation?
Concept evaluation is the process of grading & evaluating concepts for determination of their relative merits. Concept evaluation is done using both qualitative and quantitative approaches for determining the technical, financial, and marketing feasibility of a concept. This requires,
1. A ranked set of criterions on which each concept is rated,
2. a reference design that is used as a control and against which comparisons are made, and
3. selection of method to rank concepts with respect to the criteria that is both effective and efficient.
The ranking of concepts leads to determining which concept is most likely to succeed and should move ahead in the new product development process. Concept fitness is defined as a parameter overall rating that beats all the other available concepts, with respect to the requirements.
Importance of Concept Evaluation
Concept evaluation helps us choose the best among many concepts. It provides us with different methods to measure the concept fitness based on which it lanes down one particular concept according to our required criterion. The most fit concept is hence chosen. Since fitness doesn’t have an objective scale for measurement therefore concepts are compared or ranked or both to assess the most fit concept in all terms. The concept rated best in comparison or ranked first I called the most fit concept. Concept evaluation is very important due to concept fitness. It is a general assumption that all criterion are important and have equal weightage everywhere, but in some cases it’s different.
Weight as a criterion is far more significant in aerospace engineering than automotive engineering; Safety is far more important in engineering medicinal products than in the engineering of office equipment. Therefore, the relative importance of requirements effects the choice of concepts and their fitness. Hence, requirement evaluation is necessary to determine which one is most important. The relative importance of requirements is done by assigning weights to them.
Measurement Scale for Concept Evaluation
The ranking of concepts with respect to a reference design we have to be able to assign values with some confidence, predicting that one concept is better than another. Therefore, a kind of quantitative scale captures the range of values with which we assess the concepts. The range of the scale for concept evaluation is small in the range of single digit numbers mostly for easier analysis. Since the concepts are vaguely defined at this point so the level of precision available in a large-range scale will lead to unnecessary assessments. On the other hand, a concept evaluation scale with too few values doesn’t work too, otherwise it becomes difficult to distinguish sufficiently well between the alternative concepts.
|
Value |
Meaning |
|
-2 |
Much less fit than the reference |
|
-1 |
Slightly less fit than the reference |
|
0 |
Roughly of equal fitness as the reference |
|
+1 |
Slightly more fit than the reference |
|
+2 |
Much more fit than the reference |
A five-point scale has been rated good for providing sufficiently fine measurements without being overly precise. The scale is linear and ranges from -2 to +2 mostly.
Hence, this concludes the definition of Concept Evaluation along with its overview.
This article has been researched & authored by the Business Concepts Team. It has been reviewed & published by the MBA Skool Team. The content on MBA Skool has been created for educational & academic purpose only.
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