Research On Collaborative Formation Of Engineering Design Team Based On Team Faultlines

The Engineering Design Team is considered to be the crucial composing form of engineering design enterprises,the key to the team's collaborative performance is to glue team members who diversified in characteristics.Yet,more often than not,low performance on Engineering Design Team coordination hazards the design quality in practice.With Engineering Design Team's nature of diversifying in characteristics of professional team members,team faultlines dilemma is exposed to be the unavoidable objective problem in Engineering Design Team Management.Therefore,break through team faultlines dilemma,and discuss on potential threats to the collaborative performance,while look into the internal effect mechanism of team faultlines by studying Engineering Design Team,and reduce potential negative impacts of team faultlines starting from team formation,and build up efficient collaborative Engineering Design Team through a close study of team faultlines are imperative.To solve the problem of Engineering Design Team formation interfered by team faultlines,this research adopted methodologies that combines qualitative and quantitative approaches.The fruits of the study are:Firstly,through the theoretically analysis of the impacts of team faultlines on Engineering Design Team collaborative performances,the study concludes on interactions between Engineering Design Team faultlines and team collaborative performances.By conducting semi-structural in-depth interviews,this research revealed three types of team faultlines,named after social classification faultlines,information based faultlines and conscious tendency faultlines.The study also ranked influence factors of characteristics of the Engineering Design Team,and bore fruits on exploring interrelationships among Engineering Design Team faultlines,team collaborative performances,interactive memory systems,and common goals.Secondly,by establishing the theoretical model of team faultlines which plays a key role on Engineering Design Team collaborative performance scheme,and by applying surveys and multivariate regressive approaches,the results indicated that all three types of team faultlines have negative impacts on Engineering Design Team collaborative performance.The interactive memory system mediates the relationship between three types of team faultlines and the collaborative performance of the Engineering Design Team,while the common goals regulate the relationship from an other perspective.Thirdly,aiming at optimizing the negative impacts of potential team faultlines,Modified Conflict Triangles methodology is proposed.Based on the conflict triangle,this study introduced an advanced potential team faultlines measurement method.After comparing and analyzing the versatilely used measurement indexes and subgroup strength measurement indexes,the Modified Conflict Triangles method is proven to be preponderant.Last but not least,driven by project collaborative goals,based on team faultlines and basic elements of formation and upgrades of the interactive memory system,the multi-objective collaborative construction model of the Engineering Design Team is constructed by utilizing team faultlines.The model has been applied in practice,and the optimal team construction scheme is obtained by adopting the lion pride algorithm.Compared with the previously popular genetic algorithms and particle swarm optimization,the study comprehensively verified the privilege of the Pareto best solution generated by lion pride algorithm.Briefly,the paper is innovated on: Firstly,by identifying three different characteristics and analyzing their present forms,the theoretical model framework of team faultlines in Engineering Design Team is constructed,revealing interactions of three types of team faultlines on team collaborative performances,interactive memory systems,and common goals level,under Engineering Design Team scenario.Secondly,the study unveiled negative impacts brought to Engineering Design Team's collaborative performance effected by social classification faultlines,information based faultlines and conscious tendency faultlines.The interactive memory system intermediates among three types of team faultlines,while the collaborative performance of the Engineering Design Team is adjusted by common goals.Thirdly,an advanced measurement of potential team faultlines,named Modified Conflict Triangles,is delivered.This methodology corrected the defects of former team faultline measurement indexes which merely applied to pre-existing teams and,castigated for its low calculation efficiency and limitations on team partition and grouping.With MCT,no limitations will be put on team formation status,thus wider utilities are expected.Moreover,by adding considerations to the weight of diversified features attributed,the computational results will be more practical and meaningful.The MCT method is proven to be more cost-effective than the other two measurement indicators which considered to be optimal.Fourthly,driven by project collaborative goals,based on team faultlines and basic elements of formation and upgrades of interactive memory system,the multi-objective collaborative construction model of the Engineering Design Team is constructed by utilizing team faultlines.This facilitates the integration and exploration of multi-goals and multi-dimensional system of Engineering Design Team,thus assisting organization managers to locate qualified candidates with least time cost.This study effectively relieved the negative effects caused by team faultlines during operation and,in doing so,helped building up the efficient and collaborative Engineering Design Team.