THE DESIGN OF AN INTEGRATED GROUP DECISION-SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR TECHNOLOGY-ASSESSMENT

Responding to the challenges of the marketplace compels firms to emplo y new production methods to improve product quality and delivery relia bility, to reduce costs, and above all, to achieve greater flexibility . This paper outlines the system design of a group decision support sy stem, developed to guide management through the process of new technol ogy evaluation and adoption. The advantages of the proposed architectu re include the opportunity to integrate a variety of independently dev eloped components, the localisation of components (which leads to simp lified maintenance) and the flexibility in the future for expanding an d modifying the system.