A Scientific Foundation of Collaborative Engineering

Abstract

Collaborative engineering is the practical application of collaboration sciences to the engineering domain. In today's highly connected technology-driven economy, the production industry must rely on the best practices of collaborative engineering to stay competitive when designing, manufacturing and operating complex machines, processes, and systems on a global scale. Despite its importance, collaborative engineering is currently more of a practiced art than a scientific discipline. A better understanding of how engineers should collaborate with all stakeholders to accomplish complex tasks that fulfill our increasing social responsibilities is a grand challenge. However, because we currently lack well-defined sciences of human collaboration, we must first establish a scientific foundation of collaborative engineering to develop this emerging field into a rigorous discipline. This paper reports on the CIRP community's collective efforts to establish such a scientific foundation according to the "Observation Hypothesis Theory" development pathway. Our objective is to spearhead the rigorous development of this new human-centered engineering discipline, so that useful knowledge can be generated to educate students and practical guidelines can be developed to enable engineers to become more productive collaboration leaders in the new global production industry.

Application of Project-Based Learning in the first year of an Industrial Engineering Program: lessons learned and challenges

“…According to Lu (2007), students who participate in activities focused on PBL are more participative and proactive, communicate better, know how to work in groups, and stand out as top professionals, since they are able to better apply the acquired knowledge to solve a professional problem.…”

Street work policy in England, UK: insights from stakeholders

“…The consequences of work promoters not following the rules are felt by road users and businesses; the fines are minor compared to the cost of disruption' (LA3). Trust is an important component for interorganisational working; however, an environment where parties feel suspicion and mistrust is unlikely to support a conducive environment for collaborative working (Hackman, 1998;Lu et al, 2007;Patel et al, 2012;Shea and Guzzo, 1987;Shelbourn et al, 2007).…”

“…The interviewee referred to an SA that would accept communication in only writing, which made it difficult to negotiate changes to planned street works. Formal and informal communication through meetings or discussions, as well as the ability to negotiate, is regarded as 'vital' for collaborative working (Lu et al, 2007). To assist with peer co-operation in negotiation, an argumentationbased negotiation approach could be adopted to facilitate discussion (see the paper by Sierra et al, 1998).…”

“…It is recognised that interorganisational collaboration is intrinsically difficult due to the involvement of multiple actors (Calamel et al, 2012;Johnson et al, 2010). SAs should therefore seek to facilitate collaborative/coordinated working through taking ownership of street work management, providing genuine leadership, vision, strategy and engaging organisational buy-in (Hackman, 1998;Lu et al, 2007;Shea and Guzzo, 1987).…”

The Methodologies of Digital Engineering Applications to Manufacturing Collaborations in Automotive Industries

“…동시에 시장의 국제화는 지역 고객과 접 점을 위해 전 세계적으로 엔지니어링 팀이 분산되는 현상을 가속화 하게 되면서 (Tseng et al, 2003), 엔지니어링 분야의 "통 합과 분산"이라는 패러독스로 인한 새로운 엔지니어링 협업을 위한 접근방법을 요구하게 되었다 (Lu et al, 2006). 유럽연합의 다수의 국가가 참여하는 대규모 항공기 개발 사업은 개별 회 사 내부, 부품 제조사 및 수 많은 협력사들의 제조 및 기술 분야 의 협업의 중요성을 보여주는 예라고 할 수 있다 (VIVACE, 2005 (Papalambros et al, 2000;Franssen, 2005).…”