Quality Tools in Decision Making - Research Paper Example

The affinity process is mostly applied to group ideas, which have been engendered, through the procedure of brainstorming. The process of affinity is performed by a cluster or team. Its chief aim is to meld the opinions, perceptions and insights of a group of people that are knowledgeable or well acquainted with the topic or issue concerned. This process has been found to work excellently in situations where the participants taking part are not more than six. An affinity program is critical when a person has workloads of data that they are overwhelmed on what to do with it.

This process enables people to arrange such plentiful information from various sources, to assist them in their decision-making. People can apply the affinity program by first examining the issue concerned in broad terms such as applying an open-end question or statement. As a group, they can the generate ideas and opinions and record them maybe on a wall, larger sheet of paper, haphazardly. However, this has to be in a place where all those present can see and access them. From, here they can arrange the notes or ideas according to their correlation or similarity in groupings.

After grouping related ideas together, they can then select a phrase or word that covers the intent of every faction, and situate it at the summit of the category, as a heading or title. This can be done repeatedly, until the broadest title is reached at, forming a hierarchical structure that highlights the correlation of the data (Parnell, 2011). Strengths Affinity diagrams are critical in solving complicated or difficult problems that people discover to be hard to grasp. It is applied to arrange output that results from a brainstorming session.

Additionally it is applied when a person is facing a challenging task but by engaging with other fellow professionals, experts or people with relevant information in the field they manage to solve problems or issues that are complex to understand (Heldman, 2011). An affinity program is integral in decision making, as it enables those with the responsibility of delivering a decision, to gather large amounts of information from a faction, within a limited or short amount of time. Through brainstorming, people offer their opinions and ideas within a group in a short while; thus enabling them to collect relevant and crucial information, within a short time (Ward and Worrel, 2006).

This process is also significant in team building as it offers each member in group a chance to contribute and give input to the challenge or problem that they are facing. Every member is provided with an opportunity to air his or her ideas and opinions regarding the issue (Parnell, 2011). Furthermore, this process allows information to be organized into categories that makes it easier for such data to be used with other tools. The information collected, will be applied with other tools to attain the desired decisions or results, more so in business, which might be beneficial to the business, in the contemporary, competitive business world (Hoerl and Snee, 2012).

Weakness As highlighted, the affinity diagram is critical when there is the existence of piles and numerous amounts of data. However, this tool is not applicable in a situation where there is less than 15 items of information have been discovered. In such a case, using this tool is unnecessary, as one can elucidate and coalesce the ideas, and