An ethnographic study of engineering design teams at Rolls-Royce Aerospace

Abstract

Market pressures impel globally competitive power systems producers, such as Rolls-Royce, to engage in multi-national, collaborative projects in which the costs and risks of developing new engines can be shared with other companies. That necessitates the development of distributed design teams, located potentially in any country, working on the same designs and using the same methods. However, it is increasingly recognised that engineering design is not a mechanistic process which can be fully described in a manual, but a complex and elaborate socially-mediated activity of which much is tacit. This paper describes an ethnographic study of design teams in the UK which was commissioned to help Rolls-Royce gain a further understanding of teamwork, in particular those aspects which are tacit. The findings of the study describe how engineers behave in a number of key aspects of their work such as adjustment to change, communication and management of knowledge. It also identifies the role of information technology in the support of engineering design teams, and concludes with a review of the effectiveness of ethnography as a tool for the investigation of design team work.