Multi-Index Analysis with Readiness Levels for Decision Support in Product Design

Abstract

The Technology Readiness Level (TRL) was introduced by NASA in 1974 to measure technical maturity for deployment in space missions. It has since been widely adopted within many sectors to assess technical readiness of novel products and systems. However, TRL does not capture all the dimensions needed to assess the viability of a given product concept. Additional metrics have been proposed to measure other design parameters, but we note the lack of a comprehensive mechanism capable of assessing these parameters together. In this article we propose the Multi Index Analysis (MIA) that combins these existing metrics into one comprehensive single index. In our example we select 10 known metrics comprising 39 design dimensions to demonstrate that our approach enables multi-factor analysis that is not possible with individual metrics. We detail four general cases for the application of this index and demonstrate how valuable trend data may be used during product development to enhance engineering trade-off decisions and ultimately improve product success. We provide a software tool to enable convenient MIA assessment.