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Top1. Introduction
There is a growing emphasis by researchers, practitioners, and customers alike to enhance the product development engineering assurance early at the design stages in order to support the launching of new products (Chin et al., 2009). Product development engineering, which is about the process of designing and developing new devices, system or assembly, such that can be produced as item(s) for sale using some production manufacturing techniques. Entails activities which deal with, issues relating to product ideation, design, reliability, quality, and cost, serviceability, manufacturing, testing, and assembling of new products, for the purpose of making the resulting product attractive to its intended market. It involves a series of processes and strategies ranging from the understanding of the current market trends (Mihaela et al., 2010), understanding customers’ requirements and expectations (Li et al., 2012; Saeed et al., 2013), the systematic approach to the design of new product (Sydenham, 2003), the cost implication of new products design and development. The generation and evaluation of new product design ideas (Aikhuele & Turan, 2017), managing the design and development processes (Berends et al., 2011; Turner, 1985), satisfying the different engineering characteristics for the product manufacturing processes (Gopalakrishnan & Pandiarajan, 1991; Perzyk & Meftah, 1998), decision-making in the product design process (Kemper et al., 2006) and the testing and sales of the product (Fader, et al., 2003).
Product development engineering, which advocates for the building in of all relevant product attributes during the early phase of new product development, has continued to receive a great deal of attention from the research community over the past few years (Li et al., 2016). With so many work on customers’ requirements and expectations (Hemetsberger & Godula, 2007; Junwu et al., 2012; Li et al., 2012), the cost implication of new products designs (Chwastyk & Kołosowski, 2014; Varadarajan, 2013), and the generation and evaluation of new product design ideas (Herring et al., 2009; Kumar, et al., 2016). However, there are a number of challenging issues still open for research in the product development engineering processes, among which are; (1) The difficulty, to effectively evaluate the large number of solutions generated during the conceptual phase of new products (Tang, 1998). (2) Making effective decisions about new concept product designs in the means of conflicting and interrelated attributes (Turan, 2013). (3) Representing and handling the incomplete, inconsistent, and imprecise information’s that is typical of engineering design concept problems (Zeiler et al., 2007). (4) Reliability issues at the early phase of product design and development (Sanchez & Pan, 2011) and finally, (5) the consolidation of the large sources of reliability and design concept information at the early product design stage (Meeker & Hong, 2014).