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Identifying the cause and effect factors of agile

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DOI: 10.1007/s10845-008-0153-x

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J Intell Manuf (2009) 20:637–648
DOI 10.1007/s10845-008-0153-x
Identifying the cause and effect factors of agile NPD process with fuzzy
DEMATEL method: the case of Iranian companies
Roxana Fekri · Alireza Aliahmadi ·
Mohammad Fathian
Received: 21 November 2007 / Accepted: 15 July 2008 / Published online: 31 July 2008
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008
Abstract Although the New Product Development (NPD)
process is dynamic in nature, with the dawning of the new
millennium the rate of the changes in this process has been
increased. Individual customer needs, pressure of global
competition, fragmentation of markets into smaller segments,
rapid and never ending changes in technological aspects and
flexible production, force the NPD teams to introduce new
products to the markets as rapidly as possible. In response
to these dynamic and unanticipated changes agile NPD is a
focus to manufacturing enterprises. Identifying the cause and
effect factors of this kind of system can help the NPD man-
agers to show a good view of this process and improve their
decision making quality. In this paper first among 32 main
items related to agile NPD process, 6 critical success factors
are extracted by using the explanatory factor analysis method
done on the NPD projects in Iranian companies and then
to compensate the vagueness in the complex and dynamic
environment of agile NPD and also the uncertain human judg-
ment about the factors affecting this process, Fuzzy Decision-
Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL)
method is proposed to divide these critical success factors
into cause and effect groups.
R. Fekri (B) · A. Aliahmadi · M. Fathian
Department of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science
and Technology, Narmark Street, Tehran, Iran
e-mail: fekri@iust.ac.ir; far504504@yahoo.com
A. Aliahmadi
e-mail: aaliahmadi@iust.ac.ir
M. Fathian
e-mail: fathian@iust.ac.ir
R. Fekri
Third floar, 13, Mohandesi Ave, Shariati street, Tehran, Iran
Keywords New product development · Agility · Critical
success factors · Explanatory factor analysis · Fuzzy
DEMATEL method
Introduction
The ability to develop and launch the new product
successfully as one of the key determinants of the firm’s
competitive advantages is the primary objective of innova-
tion management and one of the most critical tasks and
challenging issues that managers face. The competitive situ-
ation in manufacturing innovative products for many compa-
nies has become more intense in terms of reduced lead-time,
cost reduction, increased demand for higher quality and indi-
vidual products (Chen et al. 2006). To achieve these goals,
applying some management issues and techniques such as
lean production, alliance strategies, outsourcing, Business
Process Reengineering (BPR), Total Quality Management
(TQM), concurrent engineering, risk and change manage-
ment have been suggested and used (Cooper 2003; Cooper
and Klienshmidth 1987; Ribbens 2000; Womack et al. 1990;
Engardino and Einhorn 2005; Quinn 2000). On the other
hand firms which are operating as innovative manufacturers
face a host of uncertainties that make it difficult to be reli-
able in the changing and turbulent environment. Although
NPD process contains a tremendous degree of complexity
and uncertainty, and this process as a multidisciplinary task,
is dynamic in nature (Song and Noh 2006), it has never been
more challenging or rewarding than it is today. The impor-
tance of reducing time as a competitive weapon to concur
on the uncertainties in NPD process has been recognized
by many researchers (Calantone and Di Benedetto 2000;
Cohen et al. 1996; Gupta et al. 1992; Griffin and Houser
1996; Kessler and Bierly 2002; Swink et al. 2006; Cooper
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638 J Intell Manuf (2009) 20:637–648

2003; Kessler and Chakrabarti 1999; Lukas and Menon 2004, four discussion and some details about the results are men-
Menon et al. 2002; Nambisan 2002; Tomkovick and Miller tioned and in the last section the conclusion and some sug-
2000; Wheelwright and Clark 1882). Volatile global mar- gestions for future researches will be presented.
kets, rapid technological changes and turbulent customer
needs and demands make NPD managers to focus on the
fast NPD to increase efficiency in this process and reduce the
Literature review
risk of innovation. Furthermore, to become more responsive
to the needs of market it is required speed and a high level
D’avani (1994) defined the agility concept as the ability to
of maneuverability, which is termed agility. Agility means
detect opportunities for innovation and seize those compet-
the firm’s nimbleness to quickly reassemble its technology,
itive market opportunities by assembling requisite assets,
employees and management via a sophisticated communica-
knowledge and relationship with speed and surprise. In
tion infrastructure in a deliberate, effective and coordinated
another definition an agile firm is defined as the fast, rapidly,
response to changes of customer demand in the market envi-
configurable, self-directed, customer and supplier integrated
ronment of continuous and unanticipated changes (Kodish
and virtual organization of the future (Dove et al. 1996;
et al. 1995). As Christopher (2000) mentioned there is the
Gunneson 1997). In all the agility definitions, the power of
real difference between the concept of speed (meeting cus-
exploring, adaptation and responsiveness to the environmen-
tomer demands in the context of shortened delivery lead-
tal changes are vital factors.
time) and agility. Moving quickly is only one of the aspects
As mentioned earlier rapid technological improvement,
of agility, which is responding fast and lean to the changes
volatile global markets, never ending customer needs and an
in terms of both variety and volume. As mentioned earlier
increasing rate of innovative products make NPD process
although reducing the cycle time in NPD process is studied
more turbulent and unanticipated than ever before. Using
by many researchers, using the agility attributes and dimen-
agility concept and its dimensions in every stage of NPD
sions in these projects because of their dynamic and uncer-
process to conquer these unanticipated changes could be
tain nature could be more profitable and useful. On the other
profitable and useful. There are different models of NPD
hand identifying the cause and effect factors affecting the
process in the literature and this multidisciplinary process
agile NPD process can show a good view of this process to
is based on the series of development stages (Cooper and
the NPD mangers and help them to make reliable decisions
Klienshmidth 1987; Crawford and Di Benedetto 2003;
in the uncertain conditions. The method used in this paper for
Hauser 1993; Peters 1999; Tzokas et al. 2004). In all of these
finding these cause and effect factors is Fuzzy DEMATEL
models, six major stages could be seen. These stages are
method.
strategic planning or opportunity detection by studying the
Fuzzy DEMATEL method is used for solving and mod-
markets, idea generation and screening, concept development
eling some of the complex group decision-making problems
and screening, product design and development, marketing
like strategic planning, e-learning evaluation and decision
tests and launch of the new product to the market. To achieve
making in R&D projects (Wu and Lee 2005; Tzeng et al.
the agile NPD using agility dimensions in every stages of
2006; Lin and Wu 2007).
NPD process is essential. These dimensions are enriching the
The NPD process can be considered a complex system.
customer, leveraging the organizational capabilities, cooper-
This process is integrated from the six stages which are
ating to enhance competitiveness and mastering the change
related to each other, so all the factors affecting the agility
(Mates et al. 1998).
power in each stage of the NPD process, can affect other fac-
tors in the other stages. Since the experts express their assess-
ments of the effect of NPD process factors in linguistic terms, – The meaning of “Enriching the customer” is capturing
using Fuzzy DEMATEL as a useful method in group decision the competitive market and competence opportunities by
making for dividing these factors to cause and effect groups considering customer requirements and desires, providing
can help the NPD managers to improve their decision making and heightening customer convenience including space,
quality. time, speed and personalized convenience. Furthermore,
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: In accelerating solutions and product innovations according
section two agile NPD and its main items are introduced. to customers’ offers, as the source of ideas, should be
In section three, research methodology is presented in two considered. Customers could contribute in three valuable
parts; In the first part explanatory factor analysis method and dimensions for increasing the power of competitiveness.
its use for extracting the critical success factors of agile NPD They could make the significant role in achieving markets
process is studied in details, in the second part of section as the sources of innovative ideas, as co-creators in the
three the Fuzzy DEMATEL method is used for identifying development and design products and as users in testing
the cause and effect factors of agile NPD process. In section the new product (Nambisan 2002).

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J Intell Manuf (2009) 20:637–648 639

Fig. 1 Using agility concept in

Agility
the NPD process Providers:
-People
- Technology NPD Process:
-Innovation
-Tools Market study and strategic
planning

Idea generation
Agility Drivers
Agility dimensions:
Change in: Enriching the customer
Concept development
-Marketplace
-Competition Leveraging the capabilities
-Customer Desire Product development
-Social &
Cooperating to enhance
economical
competitiveness
features Marketing test
-Technology
Mastering the change
Launch in the market

Results of using agility

Agile NPD for NPD process:
capabilities: Customer satisfaction of:
Responsiveness -Time
Competency -Cost
Flexibility -Function
Quickness -Robustness

– Providing an environment of capacities in which some
special capabilities such as customer relationship manage-
ment, manufacturing management, human resource and
information technology management exist, for improving
the agility in manufacturing process is vital. This aspect
is another dimension of agility concept, which is consid-
ered and named as “Leveraging the capabilities” (Sanbar-
murthy and Zmud 2004). Furthermore, because of quick
changes and innovation in production, the products should
be produced with the world class criteria. For achieving
these goals and leveraging the capabilities in a manu-
facturing organization, using some methods such as con-
centrating on the ability of responsiveness, speed, cost,
effectiveness and quality, investing and improving the
information infrastructure and empowering them could be
profitable.
– The third dimension of agility is cooperating with diver-
sified partners in a manufacturing process, which is titled:
“Cooperating to enhance competitiveness”. To enhance
the power of competitiveness, recognizing potential
partners with regard to their special competencies and
capabilities, assessing the relationship to the partners con-
tinually and frequently, integrating the necessary expertise
to achieve the agility goals with regard to different parts
of the value-net are vital tasks (Sanbarmurthy and Zmud
2004).
– The forth and final dimension of agility concept is “Mas-
tering the change”. In an agile procedure to master
changes, the following aspects should be considered (San-
barmurthy and Zmud 2004)
• By strategic insights, managers should sense, anticipate
and exploit trends, opportunities and threats.
• Recognizing and enriching the capabilities, which are
necessary in shaping innovative actions as quickly as
possible.
• Learning and executing based on useful experiences.
Figure 1 illustrates the conceptual model of using agility con-
cept in NPD process.
As Zhang and Sharifi (2000) pointed out, there are three
main parts for using agility in a process: agility drivers, agility
capabilities and agility providers. Agility drivers drive the
present situation to the near position to take advantage of the
changes in a business environment. These changes in a NPD
project are related to customers, competitors, knowledge,
new methods of technology, social conditions and unantici-
pated occurrences. Agility capabilities are the essential abili-
ties that would provide the required strength for responding to
the changes. These capabilities are achieved by using the four
agility dimensions in each stage of the NPD process. Agility
providers are the means by which so called capabilities could
be achieved as supposed to be sought for four major areas
which as Zhang and Sharifi (2000), mentioned are: People,
technology, innovation and tools. The results and benefits of
this utilization are responsiveness, speed, competency and
flexibility.

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640 J Intell Manuf (2009) 20:637–648

Table 1 The agile NPD items

Using the agility dimensions in the phase 1(Strategic planning)
1. Market & customer oriented rather than profit oriented strategies (Cooper and Klienshmidth 1987; Goldman et al. 1995)
2. Clearly defined target market (Song and Noh 2006; Sun and Wing 2005)
3. Top management support of innovation strategies & risk in new product development (Song and Noh 2006)
4. Organizing multi-functional teams to detect and solve managerial and critical problems (Akgün et al. 2005; Lester 1998; Yusuf et al. 1999).
5. Make close relationship with customers & suppliers to find the strategies (Wagner and Hoegl 2006; Walter 2003)
6. Making inter firm collaboration by IT Facilities like LAN and EDI between employees & managers to make the best strategies (Becker et al.
2005)
7. Concentrating on the opportunities and strategies with value added for customers (Norizan and Zain 2004)
8. New product strategies are frequently reviewed and revised (Wheelwright and Clark 1882; Narasimhan et al. 2006)
9. Rapid recognition of new opportunities in the market (Narasimhan et al. 2006)
10. Making dynamic, active, shared & configurable policies (Norizan and Zain 2004)
11. Rapid response to competitors’ actions (Ren et al. 2003)
Using the agility dimensions in the phase 2 (idea generation and screening)
12. Choosing the customer focus idea with ethnography and customer historical analogy (Flint 2002; Love and Roper 2001)
13. Choosing global & international oriented ideas and concepts according to WCM criteria (Giffi et al. 1990)
14. Close relationship between the R&D teams and innovation clusters to achieve the best new product ideas (Sher and Yang 2005)
Using the agility dimensions in the phase 3 (Concept development and screening)
15. Doing the customer value determination (CVD) process & customer value chain (CVC) process to test the concept of new product (Flint 2002)
16. Using quality management techniques like TQM, QFD, and DFMA for meeting customer needs (Narasimhan et al. 2006; Hart 1993)
Using the agility dimensions in the phase 4 (Product design and development)
17. Meet customer needs in design prototype & operations (Narasimhan et al. 2006; Swink et al. 2006)
18. Sharing the information of process between the team project members (Lakemond and Berggren 2006)
19. Using flexible cellular manufacturing (Narasimhan et al. 2006)
20. Product line synergy & integrated product design (Narasimhan et al. 2006)
21. Using concurrent engineering (Narasimhan et al. 2006)
22. Using JIT flow (Narasimhan et al. 2006)
23. Applying CAD, CAT to facilitate adoption change in designing and operation of new product (Becker et al. 2005; Meyer and Utterback 1995;
Narasimhan et al. 2006)
24. Using rapid prototyping techniques (Meyer and Utterback 1995; Narasimhan et al. 2006)
25. Using robotics techniques (Meyer and Utterback 1995; Narasimhan et al. 2006)
Using the agility dimensions in the phase 5 (Market testing)
26. Emphasizing on accurate marketing tests like pre use testing, alpha, beta and gamma tests after designing the product prototype (Crawford and
Di Benedetto 2003)
27. Empowering the cooperation between R&D and marketing teams to evaluate the results of marketing test (Blundell et al. 1999; Garrett et al.
2006; Griffin and Houser 1996; Olson et al. 2001; Song and Noh 2006)
28. Concentrating on early use testing after the production of new product (Crawford and Di Benedetto 2003)
29. Meet market share goals (Narasimhan et al. 2006)
Using the agility dimensions in the phase 6 (Launch of the new product in the market)
30. Providing and considering to rich data about partners and competitors to make new (launch) strategies (Norizan and Zain 2004)
31. Accurate forecast of market change to determine the right-launches time and new product commercialization by using IT facilities (Hsieh and
Tsai 2006; Chiu et al. 2006; Hauser 1993)
32. Using ERP systems to conquer on geographical, cost and structural barriers in order to catch the markets (Norizan and Zain 2004)

Based on this model to extract the items affecting the agile
NPD process, all of the agility dimensions should be used in
the stages of the NPD process. Table 1 illustrates these main
items which also can be found in the literature of this process.
Research methodology
To identify the cause and effect factors of agile NPD process,
two main methods are used. First, explanatory factor analysis
is used for finding the critical success factors of agile NPD
then Fuzzy DEMATEL method is applied to divide them
into the cause and effect groups. In the first stage a question-
naire was designed and developed based of the 32 agile NPD
main items which were mentioned earlier. This questionnaire
was mailed to the 280 NPD project managers, NPD consul-
tants and executive managers in Iranian companies, which
are the leaders in their business; profitable and innovative
in comparison with similar firms and are suitable starters in
NPD projects. After finishing the determined time of about 3
weeks, only 155 completed responses were returned. Infor-
mation of respondents is shown in Table 2.
The survey asked the respondents to rate items on a
5-point Likert scale, such with 1 being the lowest rating

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J Intell Manuf (2009) 20:637–648 641

Table 2 The demographic information of respondents internal consistency method is used to test the reliability
Type of NPD project Frequency Percent because of its ease of use and also it is general form of
reliability estimation. Cronbach alpha is used as a reliabil-
Chemical 25 16 ity coefficient in evaluation of the degree to which all the
Automobile 15 9.6
items related within the subset were homogeneous. Typically
Pharmaceutics 23 14.8
Detergents 14 9.03 a reliability coefficient of 0.7 or more is considered adequate
Food and beverage 35 22.5 (Lattin et al. 2003).The alpha values for the six factor groups
Defense equipment 18 11.6 ranged from .77 to .95 which are shown in Table 3. With the
Industrial equipment 25 16.1
project management’s principles this range of alpha shows
Total 155
the condition of being consistent (Lattin et al. 2003). The
Number of employees involved in NPD projects results of explanatory factor analysis reveal that 6 main crit-
0–100 49 31.6 ical success factors of agile NPD are identified. These main
101–500 67 43.2
501–1,000 24 15.4 factors are using advanced manufacturing techniques, cus-
1,001–5,000 11 7.09 tomer design and development, adaptation to changes and
More than 5,000 4 2.5 minimizing uncertainty, information-driven and virtual inte-
Total 155 100 grated process, market testing and responsiveness and col-
The respondents’ jobs laborative relationship and participating management style.
NPD project manager 73 47.09 To identify the cause and effect groups of these critical
NPD consultant 45 29.03 success factors and because of the dynamic nature of agile
NPD executive manager 37 23.87
NPD process, the Fuzzy DEMATEL method is used. In the
Total 155 100
next part the stages of this method is explained in details.

Using fuzzy DEMATEL method for identifying the cause

means (strongly disagree). Responses of these 32 main items,
subjected to the explanatory factor analysis solution, which
reduced the observed measurements to 6 factors. After
extracting the main critical success factors of agile NPD
process the Fuzzy DEMATEL method is used to divide these
critical success factors into cause and effect groups. In the
next part each of these stages is explained and investigated
in details.
Explanatory factor analysis for identifying critical success
factors of agile NPD
The main reason for using explanatory factor analysis method
is to reduce the dimensionality of attributed data and cover a
smaller number of underlying factors that account for a major
amount of variances in the original measurements. By using
the Principal Component Analysis technique as the extrac-
tion method and Varimax with Kaiser Normalization as the
rotation method and by applying SPSS Software, six criti-
cal success factors were identified based on the Eigenvalue
criterion. These six factors explained 77.73% of variances.
Table 3 indicates the Varimax rotation of the critical success
factors of agile NPD. Naming these factors extracted from the
term that best describes the content domain of the attributes
that load labeling on each factor. The names of these six fac-
tors, the correlation of the items to each factor, eigenvalues,
percentage and cumulative percentage of variance explained
are also illustrated in this table.
By considering the loading factor higher than 0.6, all 32
items could be acceptable and important. In this study the
and effect factors of agile NPD process
The DEMATEL method is a comprehensive method for
making and analyzing a structured model involving causal
relationships between complex factors. Using this method
illustrates the interrelations among criteria and applied matri-
ces and digraphs for visualizing the structure of complicated
causal relationships. Hence the DEMATEL method can sep-
arate the involved criteria of a system or subsystems into the
cause and effect groups to assist in making effective decisions
(Lin and Wu 2007). On the other hand in the real world deci-
sion makers tend to give assessments according to their past
experiences and thoughts and also their estimations are often
expressed in equivocal linguistic terms. To integrate various
experiences, opinions, ideas and motivations of individual
decision-makers, it is better to convert linguistic estimations
into fuzzy numbers. So integrating fuzzy logic theory and
DEMATEL method could be helpful to analyze the com-
plex decision making problems in the real world and fuzzy
environment. This method has been successfully applied to
group decision making in complex fuzzy environments such
as R&D problems (Lin and Wu 2007), global managers’ com-
petencies problems (Wu and Lee 2005) and evaluating the
effectiveness of e-learning problems (Tzeng et al. 2006).
As mentioned in the first part of the section “Research
methodology”, six main critical success factors of agile NPD
were extracted by using the explanatory factor analysis
method. To divide these critical success factors into cause and
effect groups, applying Fuzzy DEMATEL method because
of the dynamic and uncertain nature of agile NPD process

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Table 3 Varimax, rotation matrix, eigenvalues and Cronbach alpha for agile NPD critical success factors
Factor Item 1 2 3 4 5 6 Alpha (Cronbach)

1. Using advanced manufacturing techniques

19 0.816 0.164 0.212 −0.300 −2.02E-2 1.23E-2
20 0.737 0.201 0.274 −0.336 −0.112 8.12E-2
21 0.797 0.194 0.170 −0.161 −7.56E-2 1.26E-2
22 0.683 0.161 0.165 −0.256 −7.49E-2 0.104 0.91
23 0.815 0.139 0.185 −0.301 −0.180 0.113
24 0.839 0.136 0.167 −0.316 −9.93E-2 0.108
25 0.771 0.174 0.277 −0.298 −0.103 3.93E-2
2. Customer-oriented design & development
1 0.137 0.686 −0.583 0.245 0.106 2.86E-2
7 0.183 0.661 −0.508 0.211 0.131 −8.1E-2
12 7.59E-2 0.624 −0.491 0.121 6.73E-2 0.101
15 0.246 0.707 −0.448 0.273 8.76E-2 −6.3E-2 0.94
16 0.145 0.767 −0.430 0.151 0.176 7.87E-3
17 9.77E-2 0.695 −0.540 0.257 6.18E-2 −3.77E-2
3. Adaptation to changes & minimizing uncertainty
9 −0.290 0.489 0.661 0.133 −4.16E-2 −3.53E-2
10 −0.329 0.554 0.651 0.130 −0.100 −5.49E-2
11 −0.362 0.503 0.659 9.19E-2 −8.27E-3 6.79E-2
3 −0.316 0.523 0.631 7.54E-2 −6.8E-2 2.03E-2 0.95
8 −0.290 0.575 0.649 0.178 −129 −693E-2
13 −0.297 0.511 0.606 0.154 3.11E-2 −7.46E-2
4. Information-driven or virtual integrated process
6 0.369 −0.272 0.174 0.819 1.40E-2 5.51E-2
29 0.358 −0.240 0.172 0.819 8.06E-2 0.103
30 0.367 −0.258 0.182 0.736 3.96E-2 0.260 0.95
18 0.398 −0.187 0.150 0.721 −6.09E-2 0.158
31 0.412 −0.228 0.112 0.796 −1.44E-2 8.48E-2
5. Market sensitivity & responsiveness
2 0.138 −4.93E-2 0.119 −0.125 0.756 −0.122
29 0.173 −9.13E-2 0.214 −2.30E-2 0.808 −0.145
26 7.34E-2 −6.97E-2 0.185 −8.91E-2 0.775 −0.145 0.88
27 0.134 1.60E-2 0.123 9.42E-2 0.684 −7.16E-2
28 7.99E-2 −3.38E-2 0.239 −0.113 0.736 1.54E-2
6. Collaborative relationship & participating management style
4 −0.232 1.09E-2 8.43E-3 −9.54E-2 0.229 0.740
5 −0.219 0.116 −2.01E-2 −0.171 0.108 0.749 0.77
14 −0.324 9.28E-2 −8.59E-2 −0.186 8.93E-2 0.767
Eigenvalues 6.031 5.037 4.604 4.119 3.133 1.954
Percentage of variance explained 18.848 15.733 14.389 12.872 9.791 6.105
Cumulative percentage of variance explained 18.848 34.581 48.969 61.841 71.632 77.73

could be helpful. Generally to apply this method for diving ber is defined as z̃ = (l, m, u), where l, m and u are real
the criteria to cause and effect groups, the common analytical numbers and l ≤ m ≤ u. The membership function of a
procedure is used, which is described as follows: triangular fuzzy number is as follows:
⎧
⎪
⎪ 0, x <l
Step 1: Selecting a committee of experts who have experi- ⎨
(x − l)/m − l), l≤x ≤m
enced concerning the problem. µz̃ =
⎪
⎪ (u − x)/(u − m), m ≤ x ≤ u
Step 2: Developing the evaluation criteria and designing the ⎩
0, x > u,
fuzzy linguistic scale.
Figure 2 illustrates a triangular fuzzy number in general.
After determining the criteria in this step, the different The correspondence between the linguistic terms men-
degrees of influence of a factor on another factor are tioned above and linguistic values is determined in Table 4
expressed with linguistic terms which are shown in categori- and showing these relations as traingular fuzzy numbers is
cal terms of (Very High, High, Low, Very Low, and No influ- illustrated in Fig. 3.
ence). These terms can be demonstrated by the corresponding
positive triangular fuzzy numbers. A triangular fuzzy num- Step 3: Acquiring the assessments of decision-makers.

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J Intell Manuf (2009) 20:637–648 643

µ ( x) Step 4: Acquiring the normalized direct-relation fuzzy

(k)
matrix. First consider ãi and r (k) as triangular
fuzzy numbers as follows:
1
⎛ ⎞
(k)
(k)

n
(k)

n
(k)

n
(k)
α̃i = z̃ i j = ⎝ li j , mi j , ui j ⎠ (2)
j=1 j=1 j=1

⎛ ⎞
0 l m u x n
(k)
r (k) = max ⎝ ui j ⎠
Fig. 2 A triangular fuzzy number z̃ k
j=1
Table 4 The correspondence between the linguistic terms and linguistic 1≤i ≤n (3)
values
Linguistic terms Linguistic values
Then the linear scale transformation is used to transform the
criteria scales into comparable scales. The normalized direct-
Very high influence (VH) (0.75, 1.0, 1.0) relation fuzzy matrix of experts denotes as X̃ (k) is given by:
High influence (H) (0.5, 0.75, 1.0)
Low influence (L) (0.25, 0.5, 0.75) ⎡ (k) (k) (k)
⎤
Very low influence (VL) (0, 0.25, 0.5) X̃ 11 X̃ 12 . . . X̃ 1n
No influence (No) (0, 0, 0.25) ⎢ (k) ⎥
⎢ X̃ X̃ 22 . . . X̃ 2n ⎥
(k) (k)
⎢ 21 ⎥
X̃ (k) =⎢ ⎥ ; k = 1, 2, . . . ., P (4)
⎢ .. .. . . .. ⎥
µ ( x) ⎣. . . . ⎦
(k) (k) (k)
X̃ n1 X̃ n2 . . . X̃ nn

( j)  (k) (k) (k) 

1 No VL L H VH (k)
z̃ i j li j mi j ui j
where x̃i j = = , , (5)
r (k) r (k) r (k) r (k)
As same as the crisp DEMATEL method, we assume at
 (k)
least one i such that nj=1 u i j < r (k) . This assumption is
0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1 x adaptable with the real and practical cases. To calculate the
average matrix of X̃ ,which shows the average point of view
Fig. 3 Triangular fuzzy numbers for linguistic variables of all the experts, we use Eqs. 6 and 7 as follows:
 (1) 
x̃ ⊕ x̃ (2) ⊕ . . . ⊕ x̃ ( p)
To measure the relationships between the critical success fac- X̃ = (6)
tors which are demonstrated by C = {Ci |i = 1, 2 . . . n}, the p
group of the chosen experts (p people mentioned in step 1) ⎡ ⎤
was asked to make sets of pair wise comparisons in terms of X̃ 11 X̃ 12 . . . X̃ 1n
⎢ (k) ⎥ p
linguistic terms. Hence fuzzy matrices Z̃ (1) , Z̃ (2) , . . . ., Z̃ ( p) , ⎢ X̃ 21
(k)
X̃ 22 . . . X̃ 2n ⎥ x̃
(k)
X̃ = ⎢
⎢.
⎥ ; where x̃i j = k=1 i j
each corresponding to an expert and with triangular fuzzy
⎣ .. .. .. .. ⎥ P
numbers are obtained. Fuzzy matrix Z̃ k is called the initial . . . ⎦
direct relation fuzzy matrix of expert k. Denote Z̃ k as: X̃ n1 X̃ n2 . . . X̃ nn
⎡ (k) (k)
⎤ (7)
0 Z̃ 12 . . . Z̃ 1n
⎢ (k) (k) ⎥
⎢ Z̃ 21 0 . . . Z̃ 2n ⎥
Z̃ k = ⎢
⎢ .. .. . . ..
⎥ ; k = 1, 2, . . . ., P,
⎥ (1) Step 5: Establish and analyze the structured model .So to
⎣. . . . ⎦ compute the total-relation fuzzy matrix T̃ , we should
(k) (k) have to ensure about the convergence of limw→∞
Z̃ n1 Z̃ n2 ... 0
X̃ w = 0. Lin and Wu (2007) that introduced an
  algorithm of the fuzzy DEMATEL method proved
(k) (k) (k) (k)
z̃ i j = li j , m i j , u i j . this matter. According to the crisp case we define
the total-relation fuzzy matrix as:
Without loss of generality the z̃ i(k)
j = (i = 1, 2, . . . , n) will
be regarded as the triangular fuzzy number z = (0, 0, 0), when
it is necessary. T̃ = lim ( X̃ + X̃ 2 + · · · + X̃ w ) (8)
w→∞

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644 J Intell Manuf (2009) 20:637–648

⎡ ⎤
t˜11 t˜12 ... t˜1n tionship between the critical success factors of agile NPD
⎢ t˜21 t˜22 ... t˜2n ⎥ process as follows:
⎢ ⎥
T̃ = ⎢ . .. .. .. ⎥ (9)
⎣ .. . . . ⎦ Step 1: Selecting a committee of NPD experts including
t˜n1 t˜n2 . . . t˜nn 25 NPD project managers, 8NPD consultants and 7
NPD executive managers.
where t˜i j = (lij , m ij , u ij ) Step 2: Developing the evaluation criteria and designing the
  fuzzy linguistic scale.
Matri x lij = X l × (I − X l )−1
  In our case the criteria are the critical success factors of agile
Matri x m ij = X m × (I − X m )−1 NPD, which were extracted by explanatory factor analy-
  sis. These critical success factors as mentioned before are
Matri x u ij = X u × (I − X u )−1 (10) C1 (using advanced manufacturing technique), C2 (customer
design and development), C3 (adaptation to changes and min-
Lin and Wu (2007)
 proved all these formulas.
 The amount imizing uncertainty), C4 (information-driven and virtual inte-
of Matri x li j , Matri x m i j , Matri x u ij and finally
  grated process), C5 (market testing and responsiveness) and
matrix T̃ are mentioned above. C6 (collaborative relationships and participating manage-
ment style). In this step also the different degrees of influence
Step 6: After computing the matrix T̃ , now it is easy to of a factor on the other factor are expressed in five linguistic
calculate the amounts of D̃i + R̃i and D̃i − R̃i , terms: “Very High, High, Low, Very Low, and No influence”
where D̃i and R̃i are sum of the rows and the sum of and the corresponding positive triangular fuzzy numbers as
the columns of matrix T̃ , respectively. mentioned before are shown in Table 4 and Fig. 3.
Step 7: In general to convert the fuzzy number Ñk = (lk ,
m k , u k ) to the crisp value, Eq. 11 is used as follows: Step 3: Acquiring the assessments of decision-makers.

L = min(lk ), R = max(u k ) and  = R − L To measure the relationships between the critical success fac-
tors; C={Ci |i = 1, 2. . .6} the group of the chosen experts
Ñk
de f
= L + (40 people mentioned in step 1) was asked to make sets of
pair wise comparisons in terms of linguistic terms. Hence 40
(m−L)(+u−m)2 (R−l)+(u−L)2 (+m−l)2
× fuzzy matrices Z̃ 1 , Z̃ 2 , . . . , Z̃ k each is corresponding to an
(+m−l)(+u−m)2 (R − l)+(u − L)(+m − l)2 (+u − m)
expert and with triangular fuzzy numbers as its elements are
(11)
obtained. For example matrix Z̃ 1 is as follows:
⎡ ⎤
(0, 0, 0) (.5, .75, 1) (.75, 1, 1) (0, .25, .5) (0, 0, .25) (0, 0, .25)
⎢ (0, 0, .25) (0, 0, 0) (.5, .75, 1) (0, .25, .5) (.25, .5, .75) (0, 0, .25) ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ (.5, .75, 1) (.25, .5, .75) (0, 0, 0) (.5, .75, 1) (0, .25, .5) (0, 0, .25) ⎥
Z̃ = ⎢
1
⎢ (.5, .75, 1)
⎥
⎢ (.75, 1, 1) (.75, 1, 1) (0, 0, 0) (.5, .75, 1) (.75, 1, 1) ⎥ ⎥
⎣ (0, 0, .25) (.5, .75, 1) (.5, .75, 1) (0, 0, .25) (0, 0, 0) (0, 0, .25) ⎦
(0, .25, .5) (.25, .5, .75) (.5, .75, 1) (0, 0, .25) (.5, .75, 1) (0, 0, 0)

To acquire the causal diagram, the Eq. 11 is used for dif-
fuzification of the amount of ( D̃i + R̃i )and ( D̃i − R̃i )and
convert to ( D̃i + R̃i )de f and ( D̃i − R̃i )de f , respectively.
Step 8: We draw the causal diagram based on the calcula-
tions in step 7.
Now we use the steps of the procedure to identify the rela-
Step 4: Acquiring the normalized direct-relation fuzzy
(k)
matrix. Consider a triangular fuzzy number (ãi )
according to equations 2 and 3 to calculate each
direct–relation fuzzy matrix X̃ (k) for each matrix
Z̃ (k) . For example for matrix Z̃ 1 , the normalized
direct relation fuzzy matrix X̃ 1 can be calculated
by Eqs. 2 and 5 as follows:

⎡ ⎤
(0, 0, 0) (.1, .15, .2) (.15, .2, .2) (0, .05, .1) (0, 0, .05) (0, 0, .05)
⎢ (0, 0, .05) (0, 0, 0) (.1, .15, .2) (0, .05, .1) (.05, .1, .15) (0, 0, .05) ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ (.1, .15, .2) (.05, .1, .15) (0, 0, 0) (.1, .15, .2) (0, .05, .1) (0, 0, .05) ⎥
X̃ 1 = ⎢
⎢ (, 1, .15, .2)
⎥
⎢ (.15, .2, .2) (.15, .2, .2) (0, 0, 0) (.1, .15, .2) (.15, .2, .2) ⎥
⎥
⎣ (0, 0, .05) (.1, .15, .2) (.1, .15, .2) (.1, .15, .2) (0, 0, 0) (0, 0, .05) ⎦
(0, .05, .1) (.05, .1, .15) (.1, .15, .2) (0, 0, .05) (.1, .15, .2) (0, 0, 0)

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 J Intell Manuf (2009) 20:637–648 645

The amount of X̃ (The total normalized direct-relation diagram based on these calculations. Figure 4 illus-
fuzzy matrix) is calculated by the Eqs. 6 and 7. trates the causal diagram of the criteria.
⎡ ⎤
(0, 0, 0) (.09, .14, .19) (.15, .2, .2) (.06, .11, .16) (0, 0, .05) (0, 0, .05)
⎢ (0, 0, .05) (0, 0, 0) (09, .14, .19) (0, .05, .1) (.05, .1, .15) (0, 0, .05) ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ (.1, .15, .2) (.06, .11, .16) (0, 0, 0) (.1, .15, .2) (0, .035, .085) (0, 0, .05) ⎥
X̃ = ⎢
⎢ (.1, .15, .2) (.15, .2, .2)
⎥
⎢ (.15, .2, .2) (0, 0, 0) (.1, .15, .2) (.15, .2, .2) ⎥
⎥
⎣ (0, 0, .05) (.09, .14, .19) (.1, .15, .2) (.09, .14, .19) (0, 0, 0) (0, 0, .05) ⎦
(0, .04, .09) (.05, .1, .15) (.1, .15, .2) (0, 0, .05) (.085, .135, .185) (0, 0, 0)

Step 5: The procedure of calculation matrix T̃ (The total- Discussion

relation matrix) according to the Equations 8, 9 and
10 is as follows: It is shown in the causal diagram that the critical success
factors of agile NPD extracted by using explanatory factor
⎡ ⎤ analysis were visually divided into the cause group including
0.017 .116 .178 .08 .015 .012
⎢ .006507 .014 .1 .015 .052 .002265 ⎥ C1 , C4 , C5 and C6 , while the effect group was composed of
  ⎢ ⎢ .063 .087 .037 .109 .017 .016
⎥
⎥ factors C2 and C3 . So, “using advanced manufacturing tech-
matri x lij = ⎢
⎢ .115
⎥
⎥
⎢ .199 .22 .04 .127 .156 ⎥ niques”, “information -driven and virtual integrated process”,
⎣ .017 .118 .132 .0106 .018 .016 ⎦ ‘market testing and responsiveness” and “collaborative rela-
.008062 .069 .12 .021 .091 .003097 tionship and participating management style” are cause
factors while “customer design and development” and “adap-
⎡ ⎤
.058 .23 .295 .181 .065 .036 tation to changes and minimizing uncertainty”, are effect
⎢ .037 .069 .201 .106 .133 .021 ⎥ factors.
  ⎢ ⎢ .145 .202 .119 .207 .096
⎥
.041 ⎥ By considering to these cause and effect groups, mangers
matri x m ij = ⎢
⎢ .219
⎥
⎢ .359 .393 .136 .251 .227 ⎥
⎥ can also determine that all the items related to each critical
⎣ .058 .23 .251 .205 .09 .041 ⎦ success factors as are mentioned in the Table 3,also can be
.075 .178 .234 .077 .175 .015 divided to the cause and effect items. So these items can be
considered as the cause and effect items in the agile NPD
⎡ ⎤
.22 .487 .521 .416 .3 .21 process.
⎢ .232 .276 .46 .331 .342 .182 ⎥ For example, since the “collaborative relationship and
  ⎢ ⎢ .354 .471 .36 .45 .334
⎥
.216 ⎥ participating management style” is considered as the cause
matri x u ij = ⎢
⎢ .475
⎥
⎢ .639 .681 .397 .53 .396 ⎥
⎥
factor, so all the items related to this factor (Table 3), such as
⎣ .281 .505 .541 .456 .268 .221 ⎦ “organizing multi-functional teams to detect and solve man-
.291 .455 .522 .331 .406 .15 agerial and critical problems”, “making close relationship

⎡ ⎤
(.017, .058, .22) (.116, .23, .487) (.178, .259, .521) (.08, .181, .416) (.015, .065, .3) (.012, .036, .21)
⎢(.0065, .087, .232) (.014, .069, .276) (.1, .201, .46) (.015, .106, .331) (.052, .133, .342) (.002265, .021, .182)⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢(.063, .145, .354) (.087, .202, .471) (.037, .119, .36) (.0109, .207, .45) (.017, .096, .334) (.016, .041, .216) ⎥
T̃ = ⎢
⎢(.115, .219, .475)
⎥
⎢ (.199, .359, .639) (.22, .393, .681) (.04, .136, .397) (.127, .251, .53) (.156, .227, .396) ⎥ ⎥
⎣(.017, .058, .281) (.118, .23, .505) (.132, .251, .541) (.106, .205, .456) (.018, .09, .268) (.016, .041, .221) ⎦
(.0086, .075, .291) (.069, .178, .455) (.12, .236, .522) (.021, .77, .331) (.091, .175, .406) (.003097, .015, .15)

Step 6: After computing the matrix T̃ , the amounts of D̃i +
R̃i and D̃i − R̃i are calculated. D̃i and R̃i are sum of the
rows and the sum of the columns of matrix T̃ respec-
tively. Table 5 illustrates the amounts of D̃i , R̃i , D̃i +
R̃i and D̃i − R̃i .
Step 7: Now we use the Eq. 11 for diffuzification of the
amount of D̃i + R̃i and D̃‘i − R̃i and convert to ( D̃i +
R̃i )de f and ( D̃i − R̃i )de f respectively. These amounts
are illustrated in the Table 6. Then we draw the causal
with customers & suppliers to find the strategies” and “also
making close relationship between the R&D teams and inno-
vation clusters to achieve the best new product ideas” can be
considered as the cause items in the agile NPD process. This
matter is also true for the items related to the effect critical
success factor groups.
From the causal diagram, valuable cues are obtained that
could help the NPD managers in making decisions and pre-
pare a good view from the agile NPD process and introduce

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646 J Intell Manuf (2009) 20:637–648

Table 5 The amounts of D̃i , R̃i , D̃i + R̃i and D̃i − R̃i

The critical D̃i R̃i D̃i + R̃i D̃i − R̃i

success factors

C1 (.418, .865, 2.154) (.226, .592, 1.853) (.644, 1.457, 4.007) (−.1.435, .273, 1.928)
C2 (.189, .567, 1.823) (.603, 1.268, 2.833) (.792, 1.835, 4.656) (−2.644, −.701, 1.22)
C3 (.329, .81, 2.185) (.787, 1.493, 3.085) (1.116, 2.303, 5.27) (−2.756, −.683, 1.398)
C4 (.857, 1.585, 3.118) (.371, .912, 2.381) (1.288, 2.497, 5.449) (1.524, .673, 2.747)
C5 (.407, .877, 2.271) (.32, .788, 2.18) (.727, 1.665, 2.451) (−1.733, .089, 1.951)
C6 (.501, .754, 2.15) (.205, .381, 1.375) (.706, 1.135, 3.525) (−.874, .373, 1.945)

Table 6 The amounts of ( D̃i + R̃i )de f and ( D̃i − R̃i )de f Conclusion and future research
The critical success factors ( D̃i + R̃i )de f ( D̃i − R̃i )de f
Fuzzy DEMATEL method as a very useful group decision
C1 1.81 0.24 making tool has been used to transform the complex inter-
C2 2.19 −0.98 actions between the criteria of the problems of practical life
C3 2.62 −0.60
C4 2.79 1.25 into a visible structured model.
C5 1.65 0.11 In this paper this method is proposed and applied to find
C6 2.38 0.65 the cause and effect critical success factors of agile NPD,
which have been extracted by the explanatory factor analysis
D-R
method.
The NPD process is a complex system and NPD experts
2
can tend to give assessments of the effect of NPD process
factors according to their past experiences and thoughts and
1.5 also their estimations are often expressed in linguistic terms,
C4
so using Fuzzy DEMATEL method can be helpful in identi-
fying the cause and effect groups of critical success factors
1
C6 of this process based on the experts’ opinions.
In this paper among 32 main items related to agile NPD
0.5 process, 6 critical success factors have been extracted. These
C1 critical success factors as mentioned before are using
C5
advanced manufacturing techniques, customer design and
0
development, adaptation to changes and minimizing uncer-
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
D+R tainty, information -driven and virtual integrated process,
C3
-0.5 market testing and responsiveness and collaborative rela-
tionship and participating management style. After identi-
C2
fying these six critical success factors Fuzzy DEMATEL
-1
method was applied for dividing them into cause and effect
groups. As mentioned earlier from these six factors, “cus-
tomer design and development” and “adaptation to changes
Fig. 4 The causal diagram of agile NPD process and minimizing uncertainty” are in the effect group. The
remaining four main factors including “advanced manufac-
turing techniques”, “information-driven and virtual integrated
the new product to the markets as rapidly as possible. For process”, “market testing and responsiveness” and “collabo-
example It is shown that the critical factor of information rative relationship and participating management style” are
-driven and virtual integrated process (C4 ), with the largest considered as the cause factors.
amount of ( D̃i + R̃i )de f is the most important cause factor It is also revealed that the critical factor of “information
for agile NPD project success and could make the significant -driven and virtual integrated process” is the most impor-
role in responding to customer demands. On the other hand tant factor for agile NPD project success and could take the
the amounts of ( D̃i − R̃i )de f for customer design and devel- significant role in responding to customer demands while
opment (C2 ) shows that this factor with the most negative the “customer-design and development” is the critical suc-
amount of ( D̃i − R̃i )de f is the most important factor of the cess factor which can be affected mostly by the other
effect group. factors.

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J Intell Manuf (2009) 20:637–648
Since this study and results is based on the gathered data
of experts who worked on the real NPD projects in Iranian
companies and also the results are according to the common
sense, so these results can be generalized to the other NPD
projects.
Applying the other methodologies such as Fuzzy Cogni-
tive Map (FCM) to find the model which shows the causal
relationships between these critical success factors, also
investigating the effects of these critical success factors on
the cost, quality and speed of NPD projects in manufacturing
enterprises could be considered in future researches. Addi-
tionally these two cause and effect groups may be further
used to respectively serve as the clusters of cause and effect
criteria in a Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM)
model such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Ana-
lytic Network Process (ANP) methods (Saaty, 1990, 1996)
for selecting the most optimal alternative.
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