Fuzzy stage characteristic-preserving product life cycle modeling

Stage concerns have been important in product life cycles (PLC), Such concerns are stage identification, stage-related strategies and, here newly introduced, 'stage modeling'. Stage modeling is concerned with not only modeling but also aggregation of individual stages in an overall-influencing manner. It not only preserves the respective characteristics of the stages but also may be explored for the stage-related strategy issue later. To date, this aspect of PLC modeling has not yet been explored. In this paper, a fuzzy PLC modeling capable of preserving the fuzzy individual characteristics of the stages is proposed. The various concepts such as boundary identification, fuzzy stages modeling, and stages' inter-influence functions are introduced and discussed. Finally, to illustrate and support the approach, a numerical example and a comparison with classical data-analytic procedures (segmented polynomial regression and autoregressive-integrated moving average) is provided. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.