At the core of every manufacturing supply chain that contributes to national economic development, are the products the supply chain produces and delivers. The design engineers of these products handle the process of generating ideas, solving complex problems, as well as overseeing the development and refinement of the products, to meet the needs of the consumer. Oftentimes, design engineers have to evaluate multiple product designs to select the best alternative. Therefore, this study utilized the Multi-attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) for selecting the best filing cabinet design among a set of five (5) alternatives. The designs were evaluated based on criteria such as profitability, aesthetics, feasibility and maintainability. From the results, Filing Cabinet 4 (FC4) was the best alternative, ranking first according to the global utility scoring. Therefore, FC4 had a score of 0.608, followed by FC5 which had a score of 0.550, followed by FC3 which had a score of 0.525, followed by FC1 which had a score of 0.517 and finally, FC2 which had a score of 0.250. The product design evaluation problem was modelled in the RightChoice software, and the results from the analytical calculations were confirmed. Sensitivity analyses of the global utility scores of the filing cabinet designs when the weights of various criteria are varied was also conducted in the RightChoice software, and they indicated that the results are robust. This study provides a procedure for implementing the MAUT method of decision-making for product design evaluation by design engineers

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O.K. Wofuru-Nyenke, “Multi-Attribute Utility Theory Modelling for Product Design Evaluation”, International Journal of Technology and Engineering Studies, vol. 10, pp. 26-33, 2024.