Model building of research and development project selection systems, selection techniques

Engineering and technology play an important role in strengthening the competitive power of a company and surviving the severe competition in today's global market. About 70% of the total R&D investment in Japan comes from the private sector. It is most important to decide which research projects have to be adopted for future research out of proposals received from the various divisions and sections in a company. The objective of this paper is to introduce a method for analyzing the results of experts' evaluations for selecting proposals submitted for R&D and to model those expert evaluations. This paper analyzes the research and development of a certain manufacturing company in the heavy metallurgies industry. We employed a principal component model, the dual-scaling analytic hierarchy process to analyze the results of expert evaluations of proposed research projects for single or plural fiscal years. The experts' evaluations analyzed based or (1) the objective of the research project, (2) its background, (3) its research contents, (4) the expected effect, (5) the possibility of obtaining patents, (6) project schedule, and (7) developing cost, etc. The results from the proposed model offer the same selection of projects as the experts did.