SBIR-STTR Award

Quality Decision Management, Inc. (QDM), in our Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) effort entitled, Groupware System for Multidisciplinary Participation, has developed a methodology and information architecture that support multidisciplinary participation and communication for geographically distributed community of individuals and workgroups. The system is an automated environment-based on management methods and workgroup technologies-that improves the effectiveness of workgroup communication and coordination, increase awareness of process and improves the efficiency of their execution, and provides users with feedback and status metrics. Through this research, we have demonstrated and utilized the synergy between workgroup technologies and management theories. Our work has resulted in a custom software solution for our pilot environment and in a widely applicable system that has been commercialized by QDM and is now available worldwide. The organization-wide benefits made possible by this system have been realized by our clients in both the public and private sectors. Thanks to the research made possible by this SBIR grant, these benefits can now be provided to additional Government agencies corporate clients at relatively minimal additional cost.

Keywords:
*COMPUTER PROGRAMS, *COMPUTER NETWORKS, *MAN COMPUTER INTERFACE, DECISION MAKING, COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS, COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE, PROTOTYPES, SYNERGISM

The original solicitation asked for research in information architectures and new applications of decision science methodology within a Concurrent Enginering environment. Since the original solicitation, the discipline of CE has evolved into Integrated Product Development, which emphasizes the principles of Total Quality Management to accentuate the importance of teamwork and continuous process improvement in the design and acquisition of systems. Our goal is to develop a group-oriented software system that incorporates the principles of TQM to support multidisciplinary participation and collaboration into an environment to promote continuous improvement of both products and processes. Phase I research has resulted in a methodology and preliminary system architecture that integrates the disciplines of organizational process modeling, group-oriented communications software, and workflow automation. Phase I research demonstrated the feasibility of this concept by identifying and independently demonstrating major functional components of the proposed system. The strategy to develop a process-oriented group support system for Phase II is to integrate pieces of proven technology into a value added product with specific, practical application to address the challenge of IPD. We designed a preliminary architecture that can be developed with minimal risk through integration of proven available technology.

Benefits:
The need to enhance teamwork to improve product and process quality is not limited to IPD, but extends to virtually every work group and organization in business today. Potential applications for the proposed system extend far beyond CE/IPD. There are numerous opportunities to apply software that supports work groups in technology business manufacturing organizations, health care organizations, service industries, and government.

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