A service quality improvement dynamic decision support system for refurbishment contractors

A refurbishment industry grows as a nation gradually develops. To assist contractors in building core competencies as well as sustaining competitive advantages, a service quality dynamic decision support system (SQDDSS) is proposed in this paper. This system adopts the system dynamics approach as the construction model for continuous improvement of service quality. On the basis of quantitative management, a cyclic procedure is developed, including current assessment, issue investigation, strategy-making, execution performance, feedback and improvement. Aided by feedback loop analysis in the dynamic system and longitudinal case simulation for all related scenarios, the decision-maker may constantly achieve optimal strategies. The procedure consists of a model base module, a database module and a user interface. Within the model base, a service quality measurement model is built according to SERVQUAL, introduced by Parasuraman et al. (1988), which is provided to measure service quality, while an optimal function is applied to assist contractors in developing optimal strategy and evaluating required resources. A case of a housing refurbishing company SQDDSS run by the package software, Powersim Studio is selected to demonstrate the proposed system.