Innovative Production Machines and Systems Conference

The answers to 5 comments and questions (No.1 to No.5) were posted as the follows

First at all, thank you very much for your pertinent questions that gave us an opportunity to clarify better what we have done.

Now we will proceed with the answers:

Comments and Question No.1:

The sentence: “Thus, the main objective of this exercise is to observe and analyze the three CE teams working in the practical situation and to evaluate the performance of each group by following the predefined criteria (described in section 4.2).”

Should be changed to

“Thus, the main objective of this exercise is to observe and analyze the three CE teams working in the practical situation and to evaluate the performance of each group by following the predefined criteria (described in section 5).”

Answer to Comments and Question No.1:

Yes, you are right.

Thank you.

(Goran Putnik and Antonio Pithon)

Comments and Question No.2:

Related to the experiment, as stated in the paper, the experiment was carried out by 3 CE teams (corresponding to 3 VE models). The main project for 3 teams is to create a website of pages: homepage, Institutional, Classroom, Coffee, Secretary, and Library.
The questions are as follows?

Question 2.1:

How many persons were selected for each team? How many working days were assigned to the project of creating the website of 6 pages? and What is the break-down work structure which is used for task distribution to the team members?

Question 2.2:

Did three teams share the same human resources or different ones in which the team members have different working skills and know-how in web technology?

I mentioned to these issues, because they will influence a lot to two evaluation criteria that are used to quantify the quality of the website: (i) loading time; and (ii) quality of the code. The errors and inconsistencies from the experiment design, will lead to the unreliable conclusions. It would be good if the authors include this information to the paper.

Answer to Question 2.1:

It was selected 40 persons (student of the final year), from which 16 persons were selected for the immediate work and the rest as a “reserve” – to provide the “Market of Resources”, i.e. additional human resources in the case the reconfiguration of the CE group is needed. Actually, the dynamic, “on-line”, reconfiguration of the CE groups is considered within the BM reference model based CE group organizations while the “traditional” CE group organizations don’t consider it. Actually, our claim is that the CE group, and any other organizations, are more efficient if the capability of dynamic, or “on-line”, reconfiguration of organization is implemented – which is the main contribution of our BM reference model (what we are trying to prove).

16 persons selected for immediate work are allocated to 4 differently organized CE groups, i.e. 4 groups with 4 members each group. The first team as “classical” “collocated” face-to-face CE team that serves only as the reference group. The results of this group are not presented in the paper as we thought it is not too relevant.

The functions of the CE group members, in all groups were designer, projector, reviser and programmer. These 4 members were subjected to change if it was needed within the BM Agile CE group and BM Virtual CE group. To each group were allocated two more members, as external “stakeholders”, i.e. the customer-student and the customer-professor (as it is supposed they will be the future users). These two “external” members were not subjected to change (although conceptually they could).

The work break-down was relatively detailed but not to complex. Unfortunately we have it in Portuguese and in MS project files and it were not possible to prepare it for the purpose of this answer. Actually, We have a picture from MS project screens but it is not possible to paste it in the answer windows (of the IPROMS 2006 site) or to attaché a file – it could be included in the presentation or in the paper, but we didn’t think it is too important, as the paper is limited with number of pages.

- Each CE model had a different time:

-“traditional” Virtual (equal to BM Distributed - by our classification): start: 27/10/2003; end: 31/10/2003;
-BM Agile: start: 27/10/2003; end: 30/10/2003; and
-BM Virtual: start: 27/10/2003; end: 30/10/2003.

There was a diference between BM Agile and BM Virtual in terms of throughput time:
MB Agile: 95h; and BM Virtual: 82,5h.

Answer to Question 2.2:

The three teams had different persons. They had a very similar working skills and know-how in web technology. It was assured by the fact that the selection of the 40 CE team members candidates were realized among the much larger number of students from the same course from informatics. So, the candidate selection process was very careful.

Concerning the experiment plan, we are aware that it could be much better, but the problem is that organization of human based engineering groups is much more difficult then experimental plan in, saying, metal-cutting technology experiments, or any other physical or chemical experiment.

The presentation of more details about the experiments organization was practically very difficult due to the limited number of pages. Actually, some other results from the same projects were presented on the IPROMS 2005 conference as, again, because of the limitation in the number of pages it was not possible to present all results achieved.

Therefore, we were focused on the presentation of the CE groups organizational models that were tested and the final results.

(Goran Putnik and Antonio Pithon)

Comments and Question No.3:

Related to the influence of communication technologies to the experiment result in particular and to the proposed organization models in general.

As mentioned in the paper: netOffice software is used in addition to emails for communication among the team members . This software is a free web based project-management environment. Compared to Microsoft Project, Autotask AceProject and TeamHeadquarters, netOffice provides very simple functions for the project management: Project View, Calendar Views, Create Report, Bookmark, and Preferences. The influence of this communication technology (netOffice) to teamwork quality of the experiment project is not much. The question is as follows:

Do you think that the communication technology such as online and virtual conferences (or meetings) (e.g: OpenSpace-Online, CamFrog, AliceStreet Conference Center, BT Conferencing, CityIS)will influence to the “functions and benefits” of 3 proposed organization models?

Answer to Comments and Question No.3:

The technology is certainly an important factor. However, our objective was not investigating the technology factor but the organisation as the factor. This was the reason why different CE groups has different organisations but the same technology. Investigation of the technology will be the issue of our research in some future project. Another issue would be the “wighting” factor of the technology versus organization. Our belief is that technology is not “almighty” and the organizational model is in many situations the determinant factor. But, let us work on it in the next projects.

(Goran Putnik and Antonio Pithon)

Comments and Question No.4:

Do you think that the proposed VE models can be applied for project management areas in which the team members are geographically distant from each other (virtual teams). The typical projects like this are the IPROMS at http://www.iproms.org, and “collaborative" design ones. If YES, what are your solutions for the team building, balance, and motivation? These are key-issues in the area of project management in which the common team organization structure used are Hierarchical and Matrix.

Answer to comments and Question No.4:

Yes, the proposed CE teams organization models based on VE models can be applied for any project management area.

The geographical distribution (distance) is one of the main requirements for our organization models. Without it the BM reference model has no sense. What you call “virtual” teams”, implying the referred geographical distance among the CE team members, is for as just a “distributed” CE team, as they work on distance. The use of “virtual” attribute for this teams in practice is only because they use some saying Internet based communications. However, by our position, this is not sufficient to cal them “virtual”. We are aware that it Is the term used widely in literature but we think it is not fully correct. Thus, we call this kind of teams only “distributed” (geographically).

Actually, all three teams in our experiments are distributed geographically. For the difference, only the last one team organization we call “virtual” (BM Virtual) as the team members don’t have direct contact among themselves and they are not aware with whom in particular they exchange the data. This is provided through the broker’s service. The second team, is based on the BM reference model but during the operation the team members communicate directly with each other – so, no “virtuality” – the broker acts only in need for reconfiguration but after the reconfiguration the “old” members will communicate with the new team members. As this team are subjected to dynamic reconfigurations we call it “Agile, i.e. BM Agile.

Resuming, (this could be explained better in the paper but we believed it is clear …), we have tested three teams, with the following characteristics – for which different team organizations were applied:

1. Distributed CE team – geographically distributed (usually, or “traditionally”, called in the literature “virtual” teams, which we think is not quite correct)

2. BM_VEARM Agile CE teams - geographically distributed and agile - with the capability of reconfiguration with the broker as the agent, or manager, of reconfiguration.

3. BM_VEARM Virtual CE teams - geographically distributed, agile and virtual - with the capability of reconfiguration with the broker as the agent, or manager, of reconfiguration and with the organizational structure which doesn’t permit the members of the team to see each other – i.e. each member works in a virtual environment and communicate with some virtual CE team member.

The “collaborative” work (design) is only a special case of Concurrent (Engineering). Actually, the “collaborative” is less demanding then “Concurrent”. “Collaborative” is more similar, if not equal, to “simultaneous”. The difference is that the “concurent” implies concurrency, and therefore IMPLIES the CONFLICT RESOLUTION MANAGEMENT while the “collaborative” and “simultaneous” may not imply it. Therefore, when we use “Concurrent” it implies the “collaboratoive” too – as a special, simpler, case.

The solutions for the “the team building, balance, and motivation” is exactly through the dynamically reconfigurable organization. However, to implement the dynamic reconfiguration of the CE/project teams it is necessary too the specific environment which was not the subject of consideration in this paper but which was the subject of our research in other projects. Our model of the environment that is necessary for providing the dynamic organizational reconfiguration we call “Market of Resources” (MR). We have published a number of publications on this concept (MR), for example:

Book:
Cunha M. M., Putnik G. (2006) Agile Virtual Enterprises: Implementation and Management Support, IDEA Group Publishing, Hershey, PA, USA, pages: 381 (ISBN 1599040115)

Paper:
Cunha M. M., Putnik G. (2006) Identification of the domain of opportunities for a Market of Resources for Virtual Enterprise integration, International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Fransis, UK, Vol. 44, No. 12, pp: 2277-2298

(Goran Putnik and Antonio Pithon)

Comments and Question No.5:

Are there any companies and organizations which are intending to apply the proposed VE models or the similarities today? And which business areas will get the best benefit from three proposed VE models?

Answer to Comments and Question No.5:

At the moment we have one industrial company (between M(edium) and L(arge) type-) that is intending to implement the proposed models. The project is on course and implies too one PhD project in the company. We expect the first real-life industrial results publishable within 2 years at maximum.

Also, we have a company SW (L(arge) type) provider that is interesting in producing the supporting SW solutions and environment for the models proposed.
We believe more companies will be interested in the future.

The models proposed are applicable to virtually any business area, as it is a VE (Virtual enterprise) organizational model at the first place which is tested in CE area as one of the application areas.

Hoping we have managed to answer your questions. thank you veru muach again.

(Goran Putnik and Antonio Pithon)

Dear Prof. Goran Putnik and Prof.Antonio Pithon,

Thank you very much for your detailed and clear answers to the comments and questions. I did re-organise the page format so that the IPROMS participants can easily follows the writing.

Also many thanks for the good references.

We are looking forwards to your next research results, especially the influences of (not only) the ORGANIZATION factor, (but also) the TECHNOLOGY one to Virtual Enterprises, since the evolution of the Computer and Information Technology would strongly influences to the big-picture of the VE as well as E-Commerce.

Finally, I would suggest you may apply the MCDM (Multi-Criteria Decision Making) models to your research. MCDM models are well-known in Industrial Engineering areas, they are used for solving the problems related to multi-criteria/ constraints, the information may be obtained at this website:

http://www.terry.uga.edu/mcdm/

Best regards,

Le, Cardiff University, Wales, UK