Collaborative Aspects in Manufacturing Vision Development

    Project Details

    Description

    Manufacturing vision development should be a widely participative and integrative process involving managers and employees from various departments, job descriptions and age groups. Only through such broad-scale involvement can a shared vision be created, a vision eliciting a feeling of ownership in each participant that carries over to the implementation process. Every company faces the problem of collaboration between different corporate cultures; that is the main focus of this project. Dialogue is an important way to address this problem. By using constructive dialogue in the manufacturing vision development process, participants will reach a better understanding and shared thinking, impacting not only how they act, but also how they act together. Visualization is an important part of the dialogue process, so the usage of different visualization tools will be analyzed and evaluated in this project. Moreover, to enhance the sharing of specific knowledge in this process a modeling bank, or knowledge base, will be established. This modeling bank will act as a quick reference tool, presenting the basics of any aspect of manufacturing vision development in a concise, visualization oriented way. It is important that this manufacturing vision development process be conducted in an environment that facilitates creative thinking, that people are brought out of their everyday settings, and the Experimental Laboratory for Production (ELP) at CIP has been developed to fulfill this function. As a part of this project, the ELP will host a series of manufacturing vision development sessions involving diversified groups from single corporations. Questionnaires and self-assessment tools will be designed to zero in on the dialogue, learning and teamwork skills developed by the participating groups in these sessions. In short, the aim is to create a collaborative environment that will promote the development of innovative, holistic manufacturing visions evoking a feeling of ownership from each contributor. Action research and qualitative analysis will be the research methodologies employed in this project. CIP project group: Iskra Dukovska-Popovska (Ph.D. researcher), Jens Ove Riis (advisor) Project duration: 2002-2004
    StatusFinished
    Effective start/end date31/12/200331/12/2003