Estimate Uncertainty: Miscommunication About Definitions of Engineering Terminology

Abstract

Communication has been shown to affect the design of large-scale complex engineered systems. Drawing from engineering design, communication, and management literature, this work defines miscommunication as when communication results in a “deficiency” or “problem” that hinders parties from fulfilling their values. This article details a consequential example of miscommunication at a Fortune 500 engineering firm with the potential to affect system performance. In phase 1, interviews with engineering practitioners (n = 82) identified disagreement about what constitutes a parameter “estimate” in the design process. Phase 2 surveyed engineering practitioners (n = 128) about whether estimates communicated for system-level tracking approximate “current” design statuses or “future” design projections. The survey found that both definitions existed throughout the organization and did not correlate with subsystem, position, or design phase. Engineers inadvertently aggregated both current and future estimates into single system-level parameters that informed decision-making, thereby constituting widespread or systemic miscommunication. Thus, even technical concepts may be susceptible to miscommunication and could affect system performance.

Flexible Environments for Hybrid Collaboration: Redesigning Virtual Work Through the Four Orders of Design

“…Even with such added efforts, individuals cannot assume that they understand each other. Virtual collaboration and disasters both make understanding others more difficult (Marlow et al, 2017;Weick, 1993) and even the meanings of familiar language can diverge from one another without the awareness of participants (Meluso et al, 2020). Instead, individuals who restate in their own words the meaning of the other party, or merely asking "Do you understand what I am saying?"…”

“…The ongoing disruptions of COVID-19 aside, even routine team reorganization, team member additions, or task reprioritizing can create internal, invisible questioning within a team as they make sense of their new reality (Carleton, 2016). This internal questioning creates the potential for knowledge to diverge among the team leading to miscommunication (Meluso et al, 2020;Weick, 1993).…”

Hyperloop System Optimization

“…Following standard system engineering practice, we use mass margins in HOPS to account for unforeseen but likely increases beyond the current best estimate. This helps subsystem designers design around what the anticipated final pod mass will be, rather than what it is at the time of solution [30,31].…”

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“…For example, Meluso et al [2] recently utilized the framework to simulate miscommunication in a CESDP. Building on prior findings that practitioners define the "estimates" they communicate with one another either as representations of their current design status or future design outcome [152], the authors introduced a variable p e specifying the probability that an agent would share future estimates (or conversely 1 − p e that they would share current estimates) finding that miscommunication can affect system performance. Such investigations readily follow from Sec.…”