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Global Engineering Methodology Study

This project was supported by a grant from Electronic Data Systems. Gemsteam is a collaborative research program of the Michigan State University Department of Telecommunication and the Case Center for Computer Aided Engineering and Manufacturing, sponsored by EDS. The goal of the research program is to investigate methods for improving the efficiency and quality of engineering design teams in geographically distributed contexts. The collaboration between these departments was launched in 1996 with a pilot study performed during the summer of that year. Using four EDS interns working at MSU, the effects of telecommunications technologies on distributed work groups were investigated. The experience and findings of the summer pilot led to an extended collaboration with groups from both Singapore and Germany.

One central finding of the study is that, despite the constraints imposed by extreme geographic distance, cultural and disciplinary differences, the distributed teams were able to successfully coordinate their activities using the available communication media. The teams in the study produced several high quality designs during the four month period of collaboration. However, not all media were evaluated and used equally by the teams. Given time-zone differences, asynchronous media were clearly the preferred mode of interacting across locations. Email was the most frequently used medium, with the telephone, fax, and file transfers used as supplements. Internet-based video conferencing was used infrequently as the students found it difficult to use and inconvenient to schedule. Face to face interaction did occur among the MSU-based team members, but was not possible between team members in different locations.

The Gemsteam project contributes to the growing base of knowledge about the extent to which emerging computer-based communication media can support distributed teams. Specific questions addressed by this research included:

• What types of communication media are preferred by globally distributed design teams and to what degree do these preferences change over time?
• To what extent are synchronous media such as the telephone and video conferencing used? To what extent do groups rely on asynchronous media such as electronic mail?
• What are the patterns of cultural, functional, and locational communication in international engineering design teams?
• Which media do groups feel elicit the greatest ease, confidence, and understandability in terms of group communication?
• Which media do groups feel contribute the most to group progress?
• How do globally distributed engineering design teams perform compared to physically proximate engineering design teams and do multimedia applications enhance performance?

A list of the available technologies for each group are shown in Table 3. The teams in this study had several barriers to overcome in their communication. Take, for example, a phone conversation between a German engineer and an engineer located at MSU. This communication would have occurred over a large geographic distance, crossing several time zones; it would have had a cross cultural component as the two engineers were from distinctly different cultures. Finally, this communication would have been cross-functional as the MSU student was a mechanical engineer and the German student was an electrical engineer. Within the constraints of our research design, cross-locational communication is always cross-cultural but may or may not be cross-functional. Communication between Singapore and Germany is an example of communication which is cross-locational and cross-cultural but not cross-functional.

Cross-Locational, Cross-Cultural, and Cross-Functional Communication Media Assessments: Ease, Understandability and Confidence

Face-to-face communication rated the highest on these three measurements. Due to the nature of the research design, face-to-face communication as a means for interacting with their teammates was available only to the American students. The students were from the same culture and were also from the same engineering discipline. Therefore, it would be expected that communication between collocated persons of the same discipline and the same culture would score high on dimensions of ease, understandability, and confidence.

Email ranked second in terms of all of the evaluative dimensions. By providing a written record of communication, high scores on confidence in and understandability of information were expected. The frequent use of email in the project is a reflection of the students’ communication patterns in their daily lives outside the project. Students, who have continually changing schedules, appreciate the convenience of this medium. Prior to the project, two-thirds of the students reported they used email on a daily basis. For the American students, access to email is available at a wide variety of locations and for some this also included access from home. The international students, on the other hand, indicated their access to email was restricted solely to their work environment. In interviews, students explained that email also provided an advantage over other communication media for those students whose first language was not English.

Summary and Conclusions

• Email was the preffered medium of choice
• Synchronous communication media were not utilized as much as asynchronous media.
• The importance of locational, cultural, and functional differences were the most important factor in terms of amount of communication. Whether one was a mechanical or electrical engineer seemed to make the most difference in communication patterns of these groups.
• In terms of group progress, the telephone was found to be more useful than email.
• These globally teams performed rather well compared to face-to-face teams, scoring 1st and 3rd in a design team competition at MSU.

Results of this research suggest support for an appropriate mix of communication technologies including both synchronous and asynchronous media.