Development of the city of quality: A hypertext-based group decision support system for quality function deployment

Abstract

The goal of the City of Quality system is to provide a group support system (GSS) for strategic planning of large-scale system development projects—a GSS which can significantly enhance these projects by providing tools for detailed requirements management, modeling, and analysis. It is an adaptation and implementation, using hypertext, of an ensemble of Japanese management techniques. The name of these techniques translates, roughly, as Quality Function Deployment (QFD), which is part of Total Quality Management (TQM). These manual techniques have been developed over a number of years as a response to the problems of developing large, complex systems that must satisfy conflicting requirements. They can be an important strategic planning tool. When successfully applied, QFD can save 50 percent of the system development costs; however, many organizations find it difficult to apply QFD successfully. Decision support system (DSS) and GSS technology can help address this problem. Hypertext tools allow the development of a low-cost DSS implementation to support QFD. This DSS can be extended to a GSS with network management software.