An integrated technology pushing and requirement pulling model for weapon system portfolio selection in defence acquisition and manufacturing

An integrated technology pushing and requirement pulling model is presented to address the problem of selecting a suitable portfolio from several candidate multi-function weapon systems in the defence acquisition and manufacturing process. The optimal weapon system portfolios both satisfy the technical effects and compound capability requirements with relative acquisition and manufacturing constraints. In the first stage, multiple criteria analysis is employed to build a portfolio value hierarchal structure from two main perspectives: a five-level set of technology pushing measures and a two-level set of requirement pulling measures. The developmental maturity level of a technology, its functionality, systems, capability, and portfolio are all captured by technology pushing measures, based on an additive multiple criteria model. The requirement satisfaction level of a system or portfolio is obtained by requirement pulling measures based on linear programming optimization and the first-ignorance model, which is founded on expert opinion, using pairwise comparisons. In the second stage, by means of manufacturing cost consumption and capability requirement constraint assumptions, the dominance structure of the portfolios is designed and all the technology and requirement portfolios are generated as a set of Pareto-optimal solutions, through multi-objective integer programming. An illustrative case study is presented to validate the efficiency of the proposed model, and the computational results are further analysed and discussed.