| dc.description.abstract | Globally distributed engineering teams are a reality in globally operating companies.
However, research on teams is often done by psychologists, with a focus on general
team building and working processes, and seldom on engineering teams and the
challenges and benefits that are specific to them. In this thesis, experimental research
on two globally distributed engineering teams is presented. First, one instance of
globally distributed teams in computational fluid dynamics is scrutinized. Second,
experimental research on idea generation methods used in globally distributed teams
during the conceptual design phase of the product development process is presented.
An experimental study simulating the global distribution of a three person
Computational Fluid Dynamics team shows that successful sequential processing of a
problem is possible given technological support by different internet based
technologies.
Three succeeding studies researched the influence of space and time during idea
generation for an engineering problem, leading to the conclusion in the final study that
idea generation in distributed engineering teams is a valid option. It is shown that the
idea generation method has a significant effect on the number of ideas generated per
team member. Further, the quality, novelty, and variety are each significantly influenced
by both the idea generation method chosen and the team member’s location, but in
different ways by the same level of each factor. Concluding, both experiments in distributed engineering teams show these teams have
unused potential that can be utilized using appropriate process, procedures and tools. | en |
