The objective of this dissertation is to develop an R&D project selection model which can be used by the military R&D project managers in a developing country.
This dissertation contains four major parts(Chapter II through Chapter V). Chapter II reviews R&D project evaluation criteria and R&D project selection models as the theoretical backgrounds of this study.
To study the behavioral patterns of the R&D project managements, in Chapter III, seventy three industrial research institutes in Korea were surveyed. Their execution and management of R&D projects were also studied. Chapter IV reviews the previous research on the phases, classification, and general characteristics of the military R&D. In Chapter V, the main part of the thesis, a scoring model for the selection of the military R&D projects in a developing country, was developed.
In this study,
i) Thirty factors are introduced on the basis of the subjective responses of the five researchers in Korea Institute for Defense Analyses(KIDA), experts in the fields related to military R&D project selection processes.
ii) Fourty five projects were selected from the projects carried out by Agency for Defense Development(ADD).
iii) The most capable five ADD project managers having the best knowledge of the sample projects were selected, and
iv) Fourty five projects selected were evaluated for each factor by these five projects managers.
Some statistical analyses were applied for the above scoring factors and evaluation results to improve the deficiencies of the existing scoring models; which are subjectivity, reliability, comprehensive problem, and independence problem. After applying the Common Factor Analysis with a Varimax rotation technique for the thirty factors for the purpose of testing the independency between scoring factors, five substantially independent and objective factors are obtained. These five factors are named as follows; military factor for factor I, feasibility factor for factor II, science and technology factor for factor III, indirect effectiveness factor for factor IV, and cost factor for factor V.
Next 'Kendall coefficient of concordance' is applied to evaluate the fourty five projects. As a result of this analysis two projects with low degree of concordance were excluded from the further analysis.
Finally, the correlations of the fourty three sample projects are estimated to see whether the five factors can be used as discriminating factors for the selection of R&D projects. As a result of Multiple Discriminant Analysis application, only four factors were determined to be meaningful. The factor with the highest standardized canonical discriminant function coefficient is feasibility factor. Its coefficient is 0.9418. The next one is 0.7952 for military factor, 0.6794 for science and technology factor, and 0.3864 for cost factor. These four factors are determined where Wilks Lamda value is 0.2507, Eigen Value is 2.99, and cannoical coefficient is 0.8654. The indirect effectiveness factor appears to be insignificant.
The scoring model suggested in this study is;
\begin{eqnarray*} V_i & = & Σ_j S_{ij} ; Σ_j W_j = 1\\ i & = & 1,2, \cdots,n\\ j & = & 1,2,3,5 \end{eqnarray*} where $V_i = $ the value of the $i^{th}$ project $S_{ij} = $ the score of the $i^{th}$ project for the $j^{th}$ factor $W_j = $ the weight of the $j^{th}$ factor $J = 1$ ; Feasibility factor $J = 2$ ; Military factor $J = 3$ ; Science and Technology factor $J = 4$ ; R&D cost factor $W_1 = 0.3363,\; W_2 = 0.2839,\; W_3 = 0.2425,\; W_4 = 0.1373$
This scoring model reflects the characteristics of the military R&D project in a developing country and makes up some deficiences of the scoring models suggested before.
