British Computer Society Sociotechnical Group - London Lectures

University of Westminster 2000/01

The Jet Engine:
Design Disciplines

Compressor

Turbine

Mechanical

Thermodynamics

Stress

strength-v-weight-v-cost-v-maintainability

Pinnacle of Engineering Design excellence

Rolls-Royce:
Historical view

Excellence: Merlin, RB211, 777 engine

Functional organisation corresponds with design disciplines, eg

turbine, compressor, stress, thermodynamics

Engineering Design "Halls" (hallowed)

Full-scale drawings, open plan working

5 - 7 year design cycle

Rolls-Royce
Historical view (pre 1970)

Strengths:

Excellence,

Intellectual capital & design capability

Weaknesses

lack of control of design process & budgets

slow to market

Threats

Competition, mainly from USA

rising costs of development

Roll-Royce Aerospace
The new regime (1990s)

Rigidly "gated" 3 year design cycle

Business Process Re-engineering

"Integrated Project Development Teams"

Design decomposed into work packages

"Ownership" and strict project budgeting

Design "knowledge" in computer databases

"Risk sharing" with overseas companies

Time to market drastically shortened

tight budgetary control

BUT suspicions by very perceptive managers:

disquiet amongst senior engineers

loss of intellectual growth ?

losses in design quality?

How can we find out how engineers really work?

 

 

Ethnography: how & what

"running with the tribe"

origins in Anthropology, now in CSCW

reveals:

group beliefs

values

culture

relationships, horizontal and vertical

tacit knowledge about how work works

"making work visible"

bottom-up view of the work system

Examples of ethnographic findings at
Rolls-Royce Aerospace

1. Individuals’ adaptation to new systems

2. Teams & social mechanisms

3. Virtual and distributed teams

4. Knowledge Management

5. Innovation and creativity

6. Use of ICT

Individuals’ adaptations
to new work systems

ICT has individualised work

Long term value-added work not counted

More visible planning causes creative tension

Reuse of skilled -v- development of newer staff

The conscientious designer

Teams: social mechanisms
for facilitating design

Interpersonal permissions

Evidence & peer evaluation scales

Attribution of opinions & data

Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS)

Roles of senior engineers

Team leading as orchestration

Virtual and distributed teams

Reduction of important social mechanisms

Would be helped by:

representatives per team from other sites

initial focus on building social permissions

intra/extranet to support, not replace, social links

continued renewal of social links

Knowledge management

Preference for human sources over database

Transactive memory system

Negotiate the question before seeking the answer

Information & Communication Technology

Illumination -v- support

 

Design issues and data are often equivocal

Conclusions of study

All findings emerged from within R-R

Revealed opportunities for improvement of socio-technical work systems

Scientific culture may not articulate or recognise qualitative issues

Once articulated they are highly appreciated

R-R conscientiously self-examining

Implications for Human-Centred Systems Design

Ethnography: a "radial category"

Who should do it?

When, where and how in systems analysis and design?

 

 

Further information

Design Studies vol 4 no 21 July 2000