Distributed collaborative design teams: Media effects on design processes

Collaborative manufacturing, a growing competitive structure for manufacturing companies and government agencies, is based on flexible design and production processes, with multiple companies pooling strengths on a product-by-product basis to create distributed collaborative corporations. This experimental research uses a sociotechnical theory as a framework to explore differences in engineering design team decision making as a function of various media of communication. Results indicate that design teams communicating via an electronic medium perceive an increase in mental workload and interact less frequently, but for a greater total amount of time. No evidence was found to suggest that face-to-face teams spend a greater proportion of their time discussing design issues or alternatives than do their dispersed counterparts. Realizing that critical decisions throughout design have a tremendous effect on cost, time to production, and overall quality, the study's results lead to broad implications and suggestions for the management of distributed design teams.