Using Quality Function Deployment Factors for Strategic Transportation Planning

The automated identification technology, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), provides the potential to reduce costs in the transportation operations. Local Department of Transportation (DOT) offices have to carefully consider technologies such as RFID when considering their use for operation such as Right of Way (ROW) property control. ROW operations require strategic planning in that inventory and access rights can be contestable in a myriad of situations. This research investigates the comprehensive impacts of using RFID systems for ROW inventory tracking. We utilize the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) as a means to integrating strategic shareholders needs and their impact on the measurement of the systems usefulness with respect to the RFID systems reliability performance. Multiple RFID systems reliability performances were measured in the harsh ROW environments. We introduced a model that takes both the shareholder requirements and the RFID reliability to demonstrate a multiple decision approach based upon Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to which system provide the best value for improving operational effectiveness.