This NSf project is focused on quality oriented product design with the specific objective of developing a better understanding of the interdependencies among technological and human/organizational/cultural variables within the automotive product design. The research builds upon a four year program of industry sponsored mission oriented research conducted by The Laboratory of Socio-Technical Systems Integration at Wayne State University in Detroit Michigan. In the current project, the laboratory team will take the next steps in building its research program, and extending knowledge made beyond General Motors and Ford to other parts of the American automobile industry. The specific of the project are as follows. 1) refine, formalize, and test propositions emerging from earlier work on factors that are critical to product design at the work group level; 2) to construct and field - validate a formal simulation model that incorporates the full suite of key variables that impact the timing and quality performance of product design work groups; 3) to strengthen the theoretical and methodological foundations of socio-technical systems theory, which is an important change methodology that is fully compatible with the quality principles and; 4) to improve, validate and transfer to industry the prototype management tools developed in earlier research. Research to meet these objective will be carried out at GM and Ford. At GM, the research team will utilize network analysis methodology and ethnohistorical mapping to examine longitudinally the nature of horizontal and vertical linkages between work groups involved in product design. At Ford the team will engage in both ethnographic and survey research designed to uncover the key variables that impact on timing and quality outcomes of work group performance in a finite segment of product design.( the Reliability Report Out process, a vital part of Ford's quality assurance program). The research will define variables in operational terms, measure them with selected indices and scales, determine relationships among variables using a variety of methodologies, and construct and test a formal simulation model. Each of these linked project will provide the automotive industry with new tools for managing the complex process of quality transformation, and will shed light on important questions in organizational science, including questions related to organizational and cultural change process.
