The Department of Industrial Management at Lappeenranta University of Technology has a GDSS laboratory for the research of group decision support processes and systems. The laboratory has been used for group decision making, group work education and research. Several research projects have been carried out in co-operation with Finnish industrial companies.
The purpose of GDSS research is to develop planning and evaluation processes for demanding management tasks in industrial enterprises, particularly in the different application areas of strategic planning, management of technology and customer panels. The laboratory has been utilized to define the critical success factors of companies, to execute SWOT-analyses, generate ideas for new products, define new concepts, select projects, carry out customer need assessment, and to specify requirements for the systems to be purchased.
The laboratory is designed to support 10-person meetings with an option for remote use. The room is designed to look like an ordinary meeting room, with computers hidden inside the table, which allows quick and flexible switching between computer-supported and ordinary meeting activities. One of the main software programs to support the whole group decision process is GroupSystems. It is a comprehensive, integrated set of software decision tools that aids and supports group decision making. It can support all phases in the decision making process from problem definition to final selection.
General benefits of group decision support systems:
- Enables parallel communication among group members.
- Offers equal and anonymous opportunity to contribute ideas and opinions.
- Prevents domination of the meeting by domineering people.
- Quickly identify common and divergent viewpoints.
- Helps to manage the schedule and agenda of the meeting.
- Provides effective automatic documentation capabilities.
Decision support tools in the laboratory:
- GroupSystems, Workgroup Edition
- Expert Choice
- SMART Boards
- @Risk
- Precision Tree
- iThink
- Decision Explorer
- Voter Audience Response System
- Idegen ++ (CAC-Research)
For additional information about the laboratory, please contact:
Professor Markku Tuominen, head of the laboratory or
Researcher Kalle Elfvengren, a GDSS facilitator