Success in virtual cross-disciplinary engineering design teams in industry

In today’s fast-paced and innovation-driven world, the nature of the design problems facing industry often requires the use of cross-disciplinary teams in order to maximize innovation. Assembling face-to-face teams to solve the wide variety of design problems that exist is costly, time-consuming, and sometimes impossible, leaving companies with no choice but to call upon virtual cross-disciplinary engineering design teams to quickly and cost-effectively solve design problems. These teams are crucial to competitiveness in the future, but virtual team members need a stronger set of skills in order for virtual teams to be successful. This study answers the research question: What factors contribute to the success of virtual cross-disciplinary engineering design teams in industry? Three case studies were conducted on three distinctly different pre-existing virtual cross-disciplinary engineering design teams in industry. One team was designing a process for working virtually, the second was redesigning an existing product to reduce cost, and the third was working as a part of a customer-led virtual team to design a brand new product. Team members completed questionnaires, participated in interviews, and went through observations of their virtual work experiences over a period of six weeks for each team, and a multi-case study analysis was conducted. The results of this study showed that factors that contribute to the success of virtual cross-disciplinary engineering design teams fall into three major categories: the context in which teams work, the method by which teams do their work, and the media by which teams communicate. This study’s framework provides a platform for future research on virtual cross-disciplinary engineering design teams, both in industry and in education. This study also found that virtual teams need (1) strong processes, (2) high-quality team members, and (3) higher performance in general on team success factors, suggesting that processes may be more important than technology.