Distributed Engineering Teams and Their Organizational Aspects

2016

Twenty-first century engineering student professional skills require the ability to work effectively in multicultural, globally distributed teams. Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) and Penn State University (USA) have formed a collaboration to provide students with an experience in this environment to start requisite skill development. The activity is anchored by a corporate supplied project with realistic open-ended design requirements. The students are expected to mimic the operation of a multinational corporate engineering team to develop a design solution. The collaboration was initiated in September 2014 and launched in January 2015 with Volvo Group as the industrial partner. In addition to the traditional design experience outcomes, the learning objectives from a global perspective are to: (a) understand the impact of engineering in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context; (b) understand cultural/ethnic differences and develop the ability to work sensi...

2005

With organisations becoming more distributed across several sites and countries, and with the shortage and the need for better utilisation of skills resulting in team members unavoidably distributed across sites. These factors are forcing organisation to develop strategies and enabling technologies in need for more successful collaborative working. The paper reports on a case study of such collaborative working focusing on the distributed software engineering teams. It studies three teams but looks particularly at one of these teams whose members are separated by distance and culture, and outlines the undertaken coordination and collaboration activities and sheds light on factors considered important to its successful multi-site collaboration.

Procedia Computer Science

It is common practice today for engineering development projects to be partitioned across multiple, geographicallydistributed work locations, often in multiple times zones, and at times, in different countries. Underlying this practice is an implied assumption that the tools and services provided by such an electronic collaboration infrastructure (e.g., electronic mail, audio and video teleconferencing, group on-line editing, sharable file repositories) is adequate for supporting such geographically-distributed teams by facilitating the inter-personal communications and collaboration. The key benefit is that collaborative work can be accomplished with little or no physical travel to geographicallydistributed work sites.. In this paper, we describe research conducted to test the validity of this hypothesis, within the domain of projects intended to develop complex, software-intensive systems, of the sort used by the aerospace and energy industries. We discovered important limitations in electronic collaboration infrastructures, which limit their ability to support such geographicallydistributed collaborative development. Specifically, we show that (for large-scale complex systems development) there is evidence that such mechanisms are effective for geographically-distributed review of engineering artifacts, but not for geographically-distributed creation of such artifacts. Understanding this distinction is therefore crucial for effective project management. Such an understanding also identifies topics for future research and development: the need to create more effective mechanisms to support the geographicallydistributed creation of complex engineering artifacts. To this end, we present findings from our research on how collaborative generation of engineering artifacts occurs, what are the specific challenges that arise from various modes of geographically-distributed project implementation, and why (within the considered problem domain) current electronic collaboration infrastructure tools are not effective to support this geographically-distributed engineering creation. We conclude by postulating mechanisms and methods that are beginning to contribute to the development of effective tools for geographically-distributed creation of complex engineering artifacts.

33rd Annual Frontiers in Education, 2003. FIE 2003., 2003

With recent advances in technology, computermediated communications (CMC) are beginning to facilitate effective interactions of geographically distributed scientific research and engineering design teams. However, changes in both the technology and culture are likely necessary for CMC to realize its potential, and a project at Syracuse and Cornell Universities is being conducted to address these required technological solutions as well as the associated behavioral changes. In this project, students at both Universities participate in a senior-level engineering course on thermo-structural design of the lower surface of a nextgeneration reusable spacecraft. The course requires project work by teams comprised of students from both Universities, and therefore provides the context by which to study CMC, to teach students about collaborative engineering design, and within which to address behavioral changes needed to successfully combine the two. This paper first describes the course and supporting technology. This is followed by a review of qualitative evaluations by students from the two years that the course has been offered. These evaluations indicate that students taking the course receive training not only in discipline specific subject matter, but on working as member of a design team, distributed collaborative engineering, and advanced information technologies that is perceived as valuable educationally and for its expected benefits in their careers.

2008

Student project teams are an important and integral part of many engineering classrooms. This paper examines the social-and task-related dimensions of such co-located and distributed teams.Studies of distributed teams in the workplace observe that members often face social issues of building trust and cohesion that co-located teams do not. It is posited that distributed teams in the classroom must struggle with similar issues, and therefore skew into operating in a task focused fashion. In contrast, it is suggested that co-located engineering teams in the classroom regard teamwork from a socially-oriented viewpoint. A questionnaire was administered to colocated and distributed engineering student teams to assess members' self-rated team effectiveness and their team challenges. The results suggest that co-located teams, in some ways, may indeed be more socially oriented in comparison with distributed teams, and that this social orientation may be detrimental to team effectiveness. Likewise, distributed teams appear to be relatively more task focused.

Rapid advancement in information and communication technology in recent decades has presented new opportunities for carrying out sophisticated engineering work in distributed teams, using tools and techniques collectively referred to as Distributed Collaborative Engineering (DCE). This kind of on-line collaboration not only cuts costs due to reduced travel, but also fosters innovation in product development, by bringing together groups of people in collaborative teams with complementary competences, that would otherwise be difficult to realize. Moreover, the convergence of technologies for telecommunication and information technology now makes it possible for companies specialized in collaboration technology to deliver sophisticated services for DCE, which can be purchased by engineering companies on a pay-per-use basis. By outsourcing the installation, management and support of the collaboration tools, the engineering companies can focus on their product development projects while harnessing the full potential of DCE to become more efficient and competitive. We believe that this new way of conducting engineering work will be an important key to innovation in the future. In this paper, we analyze the requirements for delivering DCE as a service and describe the implications this has in terms of systems design, business models and competence requirements. Furthermore, in addition to the primary return on investment in DCE services, we cite cost reductions and reduced CO 2 emissions as further benefits.

Human Factors and Ergonomics …, 2001

Collaborative manufacturing is aimed to increase the flexibility of design and production processes through multiple organizations pooling strengths on a product-by-product basis to create distributed collaborative corporations. These collaborations involve multidisciplinary, geographically dispersed teams of engineers who often communicate only through voice, video, or computermediated interfaces. Utilizing sociotechnical theory as a framework, this article reviews multiple sources of literature on collaboration and interprets them in light of the collaborative engineering design process. A conceptual model of distributed engineering collaboration based on a sociotechnical theory framework is proposed to understand how technology changes both the social interaction and the technical design process.

2001

 Today's global environment has presented some new challenges for project managers. Technical programs today may involve a systems group in Phoenix, a software group in Bombay, and a manufacturer in Beijing. The mixture of cultural, political, and legal issues has added a new level of complexity to the already difficult role of a technical project manager. This paper is aimed at addressing the issues faced by today's global team leaders. It begins with a review of concepts and terms in international organizational behavior. It then explores different scenarios and offers a systematic, practical approach to global project management. The perspectives are taken from engineering leaders across Europe, Asia, and North America. The paper is drawn on the author's personal international business experiences as well as successful practices of other industry professionals. At the conclusion the reader will have a good understanding of how to approach and manage a global project successfully.

This paper explores cross-sector features for ways to improve the working environment of designers who operate in distributed teams. The influence of ICT tools in design is fostering a shift in the way designers work now and into the future. Whilst their current skills would still be relevant in the emerging work environment, additional skills and know-how become apparent. The paper has explored how technology is influencing the design environment of distributed teams including the use of groupware and extranet-based collaborative workspaces to aid designers operate in multi-participant, distributed projects. It has proposed the use of a prioritisation matrix as an analytical framework for generating commonality factors from two sectors to serve as support information for productivity improvement of designers who operate in distributed environments.

J. Inf. Technol. Constr., 2001

Inter-enterprise collaboration to deliver a one-of-a-kind product is gaining momentum with the emergence of new information and communications technologies (ICT) to support information exchange and collaborative work amongst distinct geographically dispersed entities. Typically, the modus operandi of such collaborations is that of the virtual enterprise. While relatively new to some industries, this has been a common mode of operation for the construction industry for long. ICT support for the construction industry to support its ways and modes of operation has however been lacking. While organisation specific proprietary tools do exist, those supporting inter-enterprise collaboration are not up to a similar par. This paper presents the IMS GLOBEMEN (Global Engineering and Manufacturing in Enterprise Networks) and some of its core findings and developments related to reference architecture for virtual enterprises and primarily distributed engineering in construction. After an overal...