Multi criteria analysis applied on value chain definition in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) sector

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) market to date has been primarily military and many market researches estimate an exponential grow of both military and civilian applications, despite that this industry, is still in the early stage of evolution. In fact, the evolution that characterizes many actual applications, is driven by technology development, but in the future are expected significant changes in the structure of the market, so that the markets will be driven by customer requirements. Customer needs will be the triggers for a new generation of UAV value chain that can be significantly different from the more traditional military value chain, which is currently dominating this sector. In civil markets, UAV value chains are expected to be more and more complex to manage. This work describes the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methods used in a project aiming to the creation of a cluster of enterprises providing services to the UAV sector in Southern Switzerland. The work proposes a systematic approach, enabling to create and manage a platform able to provide different UAV solutions (systems, products and services); the developed tools support an integrated management of the process that starting from UAV mission definitions and customer needs collection, arrives to the value chain configuration, selecting the partners able to provide the right competences, expertise and technologies. In particular this work discusses: i) An AHP based system in order to evaluate and audit different potential partners in UAV applications considering a value chain optimization level, that must be integrated with the more technological product/service specifications; ii) A systematic structured organization of knowledge and expertise of different and properly selected experts that provides a detailed analysis of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) enabling supplier selection, industrial audit, or different applications (not linked to particular technology).