Final answer:
The 'screening' phase in the new product development process is where proposals are evaluated and filtered against the company's goals. It is part of a broader structured decision-making stage where potential solutions are assessed, leading to the selection of designs for prototyping and further refinement.
Step-by-step explanation:
The purpose of the screening stage of the new product development process of a company is to weed out proposals that do not align with the company's objectives. During this phase, ideas generated from brainstorming sessions are evaluated for their feasibility and potential to meet the established criteria and constraints. Crucially, this stage ensures that resources are focused on concepts with the highest likelihood of success, as poor initial concepts can significantly undermine the project. Evaluate Solutions is another term closely associated with this phase; whereby potential designs are scrutinized against the constraints and criteria with the strongest candidates selected for further development and prototyping.
Understanding each concept's advantages and disadvantages through Explore Possibilities paves the way for a structured decision-making process that decides the most suitable design for product implementation. This multi-step process may require iteration, as testing of prototypes could expose new design characteristics, leading to continuous refinement.