Final year projects (Baccalaureus Theses) (Industrial Engineering)

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Browsing Final year projects (Baccalaureus Theses) (Industrial Engineering) by Author "Rautenbach, Ona"

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    A decision-making tool for the evaluation and selection of Project Management Information System (PMIS) Software
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2011-10) Rautenbach, Ona; Schutte, C. S. L.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Engineering. Dept. of Industrial Engineering.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The use of a Project Management Information System (PMIS) provides many benefits to organizations involved in project work. These systems can be seen as information managers that integrate and control information flows to assist management in gaining an overview of past and present events, as well as enable them to make future predictions. However, with organizational needs varying, and features provided by these systems covering different project management areas, finding the correct fit between the organization and the most comprehensive system is difficult. The vast amount of evaluation criteria, and the variety of software packages on the market, further complicates the problem. This report addresses this problem by developing a decision-making tool based on multi-criteria decision-making methods, more specifically, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). A structured development methodology was followed to develop the tool. It includes the initial attainment of knowledge of the Project management, and management information system environments. Next the criteria on which the model would be based was selected from these environments in terms of functional-, organizational-, and software acquisition requirements, resulting in fourteen specific criterions. The final decision-making tool was then developed by utilizing the AHP methods as well as Visual Basic programming in Excel. The criteria were structured in a hierarchy, and alternatives were measured against each of these criterions to obtain a weighted rank of the alternatives. The final result can be seen as an easy-to-use tool that covers a comprehensive range of decisionmaking criteria. The tool can be used in collaboration with other methods to aid users in PMIS software selection. An evaluation of the tool by experts confirmed that the tool could be used successfully in the project management environment, provided some adjustments are made. The valued opinion of these experts and the entire development process was document to allow future expansions and improvements.