Case studies of coordination activities and problems in collaborative design

Abstract

The design and engineering of large, complex electromechanical artifacts for use in space requires the integration of many engineering groups, spread across the components of the artifact and across the customer and suppliers. And within each engineering group there is a need to integrate the many diverse skills required, such as electrical, mechanical, thermal, software and materials. This paper describes the results of a study conducted from the Summer of1992 through the Fall of1993 at a medium sized aerospace company. The study had two goals. The first goal was to identify project delays that were due to poor coordination and integration. The second goal was to identify the activities which occupy engineers at the company and to rank the activities by the level of frustration and wasted effort encountered in performing them. The first goal was accomplished by studying25 problem cases, compiled and classified into six problem categories: information acquisition (24% of cases), information access (32% of cases), knowledge access (4% of cases), decision interdependence (8% of cases), activity management (12% of cases) and agent access (16% of cases). The delays associated with information acquisition, information access and knowledge access range from 1 day to as much as a year; they range from 1 day to a week for the other categories. The second goal, to identify the activities which occupy engineers and to rank the activities by the frustration and wasted effort encountered, was accomplished by conducting a survey, circulated to 30 engineers across five different departments. The participants were required to track the time spent in seven different activities over an actual 5 day week. They also estimated the time they would spend on these activities in a typical week on a percentage basis. The percentages of time spent were: information gathering (13.7%—actual; 12.2%—typical), problem, solving/thinking (28.0%—actual; 29.8%—typical), documentation (23.5%—actual; 19.5%—typical), planning (7.8%—actual; 8.5%—typical), negotiating (7.6%—actual; 9.8%—typical), support and consulting (17.1%—actual; 18.1%—typical) and other (2.3%—actual; 2.1%—typical). The participants also rated the activities from 1 (most frustrating) to 7 (least frustrating). The average scores, beginning with the most frustrating, were: 3.33-information gathering, 3.48-negotiation, 3.56-documentation, 3.67-support/consulting, 3.9-planning, 4.52-problem solving/thinking and 6.67-other.