Selecting Business Targets in a Competitive Environment

To improve the planning process in TRW's Defense and Space Systems Group, a target selection model was developed which selects the optimal group of business targets to be pursued in a specific planning period given a measure of target value and a set of resource constraints. The model can be used by operating management to evaluate, in a relative sense, the potential of a number of targets. It is based upon a good deal of common sense and is therefore very simple. By tracing through the computations, one can easily understand why certain favorite targets are not selected.