Organizational Linkages Understanding the Productivity Paradox (1994) / Chapter Skim
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10 PRODUCTIVITY LINKAGES IN COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN
10 PRODUCTIVITY LINKAGES IN COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN
Pages 240-261
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From page 240... ...
It also encompasses the three principal elements of the computer-based design workplace: designers, design tools, and design tasks. The central question addressed in this chapter is, when CAD technology increases the productivity of individual designers, under what conditions will those increases lead to increases in the productivity of the design team and, in turn, the design organization?
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From page 241... ...
study of the engineering design activities of a major aerospace company provides the principal data for this examination of productivity linkages in CAD. At the time of the study, the aerospace company had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on CAD hardware, software, facilities, and training.
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From page 242... ...
The CAD domain was defined by identifying the specific design tasks that were being performed and then categorizing the tasks into a set of principal activities. The 200 design tasks thus identified could be categorized relatively easily into four principal CAD activities.
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INFLUENCES ON CAD PRODUCTIVITY Typically, CAD is introduced into an engineering design organization with the expectation that it will increase the productivity of the organization by increasing the productivity of individual designers. Productivity gains are anticipated from the capabilities of CAD to automate routine functions, enhance the accuracy and efficiency of design tasks, promote the exchange of information, and facilitate the performance of sophisticated design tasks.
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From page 244... ...
These potential influences on productivity linkages in the CAD domain are presented in Figure 10-1 and discussed below. Specialization of Design Work The work of individual designers in the aerospace company appeared to be relatively specialized in terms of the four principal design activities described earlier.
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Specialization of design work can facilitate the productivity of the individual designer because it encourages the more rapid development and application of design skills. However, it might inhibit the realization of productivity gains at the team and organizational levels because of the greater administrative burdens required for coordination and communication.
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From page 246... ...
reported that CAD is typically phased in gradually over an extended period of time because of the extensive investment required in workstations and the cost of transferring pre-CAD designs to CAD. Although nearly all of the 1,500 designers in the aerospace company had received the basic training required to qualify them to use CAD, about half of them seldom if ever used a CAD workstation.
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In contrast to the relatively simple line management that previously sufficed for engineering design organizations, CAD requires the involvement of a variety of specialists in addition to designers-computer specialists, computer maintenance personnel, software engineers, programmers, system support consultants, training specialists, liaison personnel, special study committees, and others. As a consequence, almost any struc
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From page 248... ...
The principal components are hardware display and control devices, through which the designer interacts with the computer system, and software application programs that perform various functions at the command of the designer. The central role of these tools in CAD suggests that individual productivity can be facilitated or inhibited by the degree of compatibility between the designer and the tools provided.
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Several of the more senior aerospace designers interviewed con tended that CAD actually had greater productivity potential as a communication tool then as a drawing tool. If CAD provided appropriate data bases and communications media, they argued, the primary sources of information could be immediately available to the designer.
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From page 250... ...
PRODUCTIVITY LINKAGES The central question in this chapter is, when CAD technology increases the productivity of individual designers, under what conditions will those increases lead to increased productivity of the design organization? The answer is derived from an examination of the productivity linkages that exist among the individuals, groups, and organizations in the design process and from an examination of the factors and processes in the CAD domain that facilitate or inhibit those linkages.
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The isolation of design work has potential implications for the linkage between designer and team productivity to the extent that the linkage depends on information sharing. As mentioned earlier, studies of preCAD engineering organizations revealed that about half of the infor
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Greater formalization of communication might reduce the amount of information exchanged and slow the speed of needed communication, as discussed in Chapter 2. The consequence could be that increased levels of individual productivity might not be fully realized in the output of the design team.
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However, planning and coordination add to the costs of the design effort, which has the effect of reducing team productivity. Thus, an important challenge in capitalizing on increases in individual productivity is to arrive at an appropriate trade-off between gains realized from specialization and the costs that specialization imposes in the form of planning and coordination.
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More worrisome, however, is their expressed lack of confidence that their supervisors knew enough about the technology to plan and coordinate the design effort effectively. New modes of supervision may be required before the potential productivity gains of CAD can be realized at the team and organizational levels.
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From page 255... ...
Opportunities might exist here to enhance coordination of the efforts of individual designers through the exploration of more collaborative approaches to the control of information. The Team-Organization Linkage As a consequence of the technology required by CAD and the need for integrating design efforts into the overall industrial process, the design team works within the context of organizational complexity.
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the costs of the design effort in order to arrive at the true costs of the designs produced. The assumption of CAD is that the additional burden imposed by support functions is more than offset by the increased efficiency and effectiveness of the resulting design process.
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Resource Management As discussed above, the traditional top-down approaches to the acquisition and management of resources can ultimately inhibit the productivity linkages from design teams to design organizations. A related influence might be less than optimal decisions by management in the allocation of resources.
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Without effective planning and coordination, such changes could cause sufficient turbulence in an organization to inhibit the realization of productivity gains made by design teams. System Quality and Reliability The findings discussed here are consistent with those of other investigators regarding the importance to the design organization of maintaining the quality and reliability of the technical system.
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From page 259... ...
The influences might facilitate or inhibit the translation of individual productivity to higher levels of analysis. Although some studies have examined the integration of CAD into engineering organizations and the impact of certain variables on CAD performance, relatively little is known about the conditions under which increases in individual productivity lead to increases in organizational productivity.
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From page 260... ...
Collaborative approaches to rule making and to the implementation of rules can serve to strengthen the individual-team linkage. Efforts to reduce the organizational complexity within which individual designers and design teams work, and thereby reduce the burden of design support, can strengthen productivity linkages.
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From page 261... ...
National Research Council 1984 Computer Integration of Engineering Design and Prod uction: A National Opportunity. Washington,D.C.: NationalAcademy Press.
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