Decentralized cooperation: a distributed approach to team design in a concurrent engineering organization
Abstract
A multi‐component design of a “concurrent team” is described here for a concurrent engineering organization. This concurrent “team design” is composed of four essential teaming components: a logical component, a virtual component, a technological component and a personnel (work‐group or humane) component. The description is based on an implementation of a “concurrent team” environment for product development at Delphi Divisions of General Motors. The paper first describes how to configure a “concurrent team” organization that provides a decentralized cooperation during an integrated product development (IPD) process. The paper then shows how, with strategic design of a “concurrent team,” an organization can achieve optimum teamwork productivity during an IPD. As it has been observed during a number of automotive projects that the teamwork productivity of a concurrent engineering organization is largely influenced by the design of such “concurrent teams” as well as by elements of decentralized cooperation, the paper, also describes four key elements of decentralized cooperation that have been found useful with IPD clients.
Keywords
Citation
Prasad, B. (1998), "Decentralized cooperation: a distributed approach to team design in a concurrent engineering organization", Team Performance Management, Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 138-165. https://doi.org/10.1108/13527599810224624
Publisher
:MCB UP Ltd
Copyright © 1998, MCB UP Limited