Information Flow in Engineering Companies - Problems and their Causes
Information Flow in Engineering Companies - Problems and their Causes
Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge
Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge
Department of Computer and Information Sciences, De Montfort University, Milton Keynes, UK.
Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Engineering Design:
Design Management - Process and Information Issues
Professional Engineering Publishers, Glasgow, 2001, pp. 43-50.
Introduction. Providing everybody with the right information at the right time is one of the greatest challenges facing all organisations. This means providing relevant information and the right amount of information - not too little, but also not too much, so that the receiver does not get swamped in information, unable to tell the important from the insignificant. This paper reports on observations of how failure to achieve appropriate information flow in large-scale engineering design processes contributes to a variety of problems for designers and decision-makers. Our observations support the conclusion that large organisations need to support both personal contact and informal channels, and thought-through mechanisms for information transmission between individuals and groups who usually have little personal contact.
Keywords: Design teams, design information management.
Author addresses. | ||
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Claudia Eckert
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John Clarkson
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Martin Stacey
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