Group Decision-Making and a Design Communication Model Using Quality Function Deployment

Abstract

Effective and efficient communication skills are crucial for successful projects in the construction industry. When project stakeholders′ decision-making defines all requirements without exception and reaches an agreement for approval, possible waste and potential risk factors may be reduced. Design decision-making is a group rather than an individual task; thus, the final design is drawn by sharing and exchanging information with which each individual project stakeholder is interactively involved. Group decision-making enables the use of professional advice; takes advantage of greater knowledge, facts, and alternatives; and derives design plans with a high level of execution and satisfaction through sufficient opinion exchange among the stakeholders. Thus, this study proposes a novel group decision-making method based on quality function deployment (QFD) together with a communication model to define users′ various requirements in a cooperative manner among stakeholders to secure reliability, understandability, and rationality in the final design plan. To verify this study, a series of communication processes related to the definition of user requested functions, modification of required functions and design feedback were presented by selecting actual cases of design development.