ABSTRACT

Many approaches to concept selection are used. These range from using "pro and con" lists, following intuitive feel, or having the decision made by a concept champion, to using customer surveys or structured rating schemes or building and testing prototypes. Of these, structured rating schemes provide the best combination of discipline, flexibility, and amount of time and effort required. Experience has shown that concept selection is too important to trust to haphazard approaches such as intuitive feel and yet, information is too incomplete to spend a lot of time and money on hardware models and engineering analysis, especially if there are many alternatives to consider. Structured rating schemes strike a balance between these extremes.