The Virtual Design Team: Designing Project Organizations as Engineers Design Bridges

AbstractConcurrent engineering is a systematic approach to the integrated, concurrent design of products and the related processes of manufacturing and support. This approach is intended to cause the developers, from the outset, to consider all elements of the product life cycle from concept through disposal, including quality, cost, schedule, and user requirements. To achieve successful concurrent-engineering design, one needs an integrated framework, a well-organized design team, and adequate design tools. The research on concurrent engineering to date has focused on developing communication infrastructure, design tools, and product data representations. Little attention has been paid to developing tools to address the organizational issues involved in concurrent engineering. The authors’ research on the Virtual Design Team (VDT) attempts to develop a computerized analysis tool to sup-port the systematic design of organization structures for concurrent engineering projects. VDT is a computer simulation system. It takes descriptions of design tasks, actors (i.e., designers and managers), and organization structure as input, and produces predicted historical records of the actors’ design and coordination behavior, project du-ration, cost, and design process quality as output. VDT has been applied to model more than ten realistic engineering projects, and the results are qualitatively consistent with the predictions from theory and project managers. The VDT framework for modeling concurrent-engineering teams is described, and examples of VDT applications are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Virtual Design Team approach to modeling the organizational behavior of concurrent design teams.

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Intervention studies using the virtual design team

1997 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Computational Cybernetics and Simulation ◽

10.1109/icsmc.1997.637572 ◽

2002 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

J.C. Kunz ◽

R.E. Levitt ◽

J. Thomsen

Keyword(s):

Intervention Studies ◽

Design Team ◽

Virtual Design ◽

Virtual Design Team

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The virtual design team

Communications of the ACM ◽

10.1145/287831.287844 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 41 (11) ◽

pp. 84-91 ◽

Cited By ~ 71

Author(s):

John C. Kunz ◽

Tore R. Christiansen ◽

Geoff P. Cohen ◽

Yan Jin ◽

Raymond E. Levitt

Keyword(s):

Design Team ◽

Virtual Design ◽

Virtual Design Team

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Workflow Complexities of Fit Criteria on Strategy Applications and Structure Adaptations

Journal of Information & Knowledge Management ◽

10.1142/s0219649215500173 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 14 (02) ◽

pp. 1550017

Author(s):

Noriss Kweku Hammah ◽

Rahinah Ibrahim

Keyword(s):

Strong Support ◽

Knowledge Flow ◽

Multiple Sources ◽

Virtual Design ◽

Effective Strategies ◽

Efficiency And Effectiveness ◽

Planning Department ◽

Virtual Design Team ◽

The Impact

In studying the correlation between structure–strategy and workflow process, empirical research has shown that knowledge flow has an influence on professional team workflow performance. Using multiple sources of case study evidence, we propose a contingent model of a criteria fit in which the effect of structure on strategies is efficiency of Knowledge Applicability (KA) and effectiveness of Knowledge Adaptability (KA). A case study analysis of building permit approval processing by the Town and Country Planning Department (TCPD) and the various planning agencies in Ghana finds strong support for the model explaining that structure is the measurement attribute determining the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge flow. A framework of four types of KA is outlined. These show that the viability of organisations is contingent on adaptations of efficient structure and applications of effective strategies. With an emphasis on two organisational environmental variables (uncertainty and equivocality) and structural configuration, we demonstrated the impact of formalisation and centralisation on knowledge flow and workflow process using Virtual Design Team Computational Organisational Theory (VDTCOT).

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Modeling Supply Chain Integration in an Integrated Project Delivery System

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12125092 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (12) ◽

pp. 5092

Author(s):

Harrison A. Mesa ◽

Keith R. Molenaar ◽

Luis F. Alarcón

Keyword(s):

Supply Chain ◽

Supply Chain Integration ◽

Project Delivery ◽

Design Stage ◽

Virtual Design ◽

Integrated Project Delivery ◽

Project Organization ◽

Integrated Project ◽

Virtual Design Team ◽

Key Participants

The supply chain relationship is an essential factor in the performance of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). The IPD system encourages the early involvement of key participants in the design stage. Consequently, this early involvement requires a new configuration of the supply chain relationship in the IPD system. However, there is a lack of knowledge in understanding the performance of the supply chain relationship in the IPD system. To fill this gap, we applied a simulation model, Virtual Design Team (VDT), to explore the dynamics of the supply chain integration in terms of project organization and project delivery process in design. This study presents a conceptual and qualitative analysis of the VDT model applied in two IPD projects. The results explored different behaviors of integration at inter-organizational and project levels throughout project organization, contractual and technological mechanisms of coordination. The project organization characteristics influence the performance of the construction supply chain.

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