October 2008 Mechanical Engineering: Editorial

editorial

together apart

By
John G. Falcioni,
Editor-in-Chief

While traveling through Pennsylvania last month, I visited a large and successful bolt manufacturer in a town right outside of Pittsburgh. In better times, this region, like others west of here, was abuzz with the sound of thriving industry. Today, only small pockets remain of what was then a manufacturing hub.

This town of 8,000 with low buildings and modest single-family homes is as unremarkable—save for the reputation of a couple of sports figures who hail from here—as the building that houses this bolt maker is nondescript. But inside, the shop stretches out an impressive inventory of 100 machine tools, including CNC lathes and machining centers used to create large studs and other specialized fastening products. Most impressive, however, is the synchronized collaboration of the company’s workforce.

The idea of collaboration goes back centuries. We don’t imagine one person single-handedly building the pyramids in Egypt. As engineering teams today are distributed throughout the world, great weight is placed on developing and then utilizing collaborative processes and technologies that effectively manage product development and the team itself.

Other than measuring productivity, however, there’s no objective way to measure team effectiveness. We hold subjective perspectives on how well we work as teammates and on how successful our team really is at working together. But a new area of research called “collaboration engineering” holds the promise of assessing the effectiveness of our teams more objectively. It studies recurring collaboration processes and aims to develop a collaboration design approach that works across a spectrum of projects and processes, and identifies successes and failures.

The main focus of this initiative today is on engineering education research. So, for now, engineers have to settle for home-grown methodologies to assess the success of the teams they’re on. They also must rely on collaboration tools to help them succeed, especially when communicating remotely with teammates working at home or from locations around the world. These tools vary greatly and include everything from the simple telephone and e-mail, to product lifecycle management software and even communities of practice—the self-forming groups of individuals with similar interests and job functions.

Associate Editor Jean Thilmany, who wrote the article, “Keeping Up Long Distance”—which is an interesting primer on popular collaborative technology tools available—is herself a telecommuter from St. Paul, Minn., and a user of the technology that helps keep her in regular interaction with our newsroom in New York. Steven J. Kerno, Jr., who wrote this month’s article, “Tapping Communities of Practice,” is an active participant in various communities of practice. He provides an in-depth account of what is one of the earliest—and often misunderstood—forms of professional networking, the COP.

Stripped away from the high-tech vernacular, collaboration comes down to social exchanges. The tools help. Let’s just make sure we don’t allow them to get in the way.

John Falcioni may be reached by e-mail at falcionij@asme.org.