THE EFFECTS OF WWW SYSTEMS IN DISTRIBUTED ENGINEERING PROJECTS – COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE THROUGH NETWORK COLLABORATION Kirsi Eloranta*,
[email protected] Jaana Auramo*,
[email protected] Kari Tanskanen*,
[email protected] * Helsinki University of Technology Department of Industrial Engineering and Management P.O.Box 5500, FIN-02015 TKK, Finland Tel: +358 9 451 1, Fax: + 358 9 451 3665 ABSTRACT This multiple case study describes the use of www systems in distributed engineering project (DEP) networks. The aim is to identify what kind of impacts new www systems have on the operative effectiveness for different project stakeholders and how these systems contribute to the competitive advantage in distributed engineering projects. The study recognizes three levels of www system usage within the sample companies: 1) www-enabled centralized document management i.e. “document sharing”, 2) active use of www system in stakeholder collaboration i.e. “collaboration”, and 3) “project management support”, where companies actively both utilize www system’s features to recognize document bottlenecks and improve processes, and use feedback information in project follow-up management. Significant improvements in terms of the project network capability can be identified. Analysis of the potential benefits of the www system use indicates that direct operational benefits realize for each project stakeholder after the system implementation. Most important of these are better control of project documents, easier and more visible stakeholder collaboration and fast communication on changes. The benefits and changes brought by the application evolve as the application adoption in the network proceeds and the application use experience cumulates. First, the system enables concurrent engineering approach and paralleling of different design phases, as the companies have on-time visibility on each other’s design processes. Second, the system enables efficient deployment of external resources, which shortens total lead times and brings noticeable flexibility and responsiveness to the project network. The application thus supports distributed projects by acting as a facilitator of true networking and reducing lead times, one of the key project success measures. However, to realize these benefits process changes are necessary. Key words: distributed engineering project (DEP), project networks, document management, WWWenabled document management systems
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INTRODUCTION Successful management of distributed engineering projects (DEP) requires efficient inter-firm information exchange and communication. This is especially important in the design phases of large, complex engineering projects as they involve several heterogeneous participants embedded in the process of defining, exchanging and reviewing documents. Companies engaged in distributed engineering project networks are under enormous competitive pressures in terms of time, scope and costs. These pressures force companies to search for new ways to collaborate with project network partners in order to streamline and integrate inter-firm processes. One solution are various www-enabled document management systems available that support centralized document management and supplier collaboration in inter-firm project networks. The systems are webbased information logistics platforms developed for distributed engineering projects enabling project members to access project documents and other material from anywhere in the world with a wwwbrowser. However, the existing research on the use and effects of these systems on different project stakeholders and on the whole distributed engineering project environment is rather scarce. In this paper, we present the results of a multiple case study conducted with the aim of better understanding the opportunities and challenges faced by companies that use www systems in distributed engineering project networks. Further, the paper provides insights on the mechanisms through which the potential benefits of the system deployment realize. Our case companies operate in Finnish marine and pulp and paper industry. The research is focused on complex project deliveries, which involve various stakeholders and actors contributing to the final deliverable in the form of documents. The three different project network stakeholder perspectives, end customer, engineering office and system supplier, are analyzed. Here, project information covers all pieces of documentation describing the product and project management processes that is drawings, models, specifications schedules, resource plans, minutes, quality manuals etc. The paper is organized as follows: It starts with a brief literature review focusing on the communication problems within distributed engineering project environment. Subsequently, the case study design is presented. After that the system use is described and an analysis of the benefits and challenges is provided. Finally, the results are discussed and some suggestions for further research are also presented. LITERATURE REVIEW
Www systems and complex project deliveries There is not abundance of papers identifying and describing the challenges of achieving the project goals in distributed engineering projects. Most fundamental challenges are related to the project communication and information management processes over the distributed project organization (Hameri and Puittinen, 2003). Therefore, for investment projects to succeed, sharing project information efficiently and working based on the latest information is a fundamental prerequisite. The recent rapid changes in the field of project www-technologies are providing new efficient solutions enabling the better management of project information by linking various project stakeholders (Morris and Pinto, 2004). The Construction Confederation (2002) describes two types of project e-business: “process” e-business helping to manage the flow of information within industry supply chains and “transaction” e-commerce that includes selling products and services. This paper is focusing in the former area with an emphasis on www systems supporting the document management of distributed engineering projects during the project design and engineering phases. By bringing understanding to the impacts and use of these systems the paper makes it easier to evaluate and justify the investments in these tools.
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In a typical distributed industrial machinery and production system delivery project each partner has its own distinct role in the flow of documents. However, each of the contributors have to share various information and data regarding the project making the document management an essential part of project communication management. Key functions of document can be divided into (Eloranta et al., 2001): • • •
Document flow , i.e. the intended way how activities are performed Document lifecycle, i.e. the chain of statuses through which each and every document passes once created Document implementation, i.e. the means how the document is transferred, manipulated and controlled
The impacts and use of www systems The potential of IT in the project environment is a well-covered topic. Many studies recognize the possibilities the process e-business could bring for project supply chains. Morris and Pinto (2004): highlight the resulting virtual integration of project supply chains providing benefits that accrue from tight coordination, partnering, quick and efficient communication, focus and specialization. The business case for the adoption of e-commerce is made explicit by Walker and Rowlinson (2000) arguing that clients who are dependent upon intranets, e-mail, and electronic transfer of information are unlikely to be impressed by contractors, suppliers and design teams who have yet to grasp the technology of ecommunication and are not using such tools effectively. Yet, there is an abundance of empirical research studying the actual realized benefits and challenges of these systems in a boundary-spanning project network setting. The benefits of adopting e-business are commonly cited as a reduction in transaction costs and increased project personnel collaboration. The reported benefits of the www-enabled document management applications are more effective information transfer (Tam, 1999), easier document access, up-to-date information and reductions in the average review and response cycle time for the benefit of all parties (Zack, 2002). In a Finnish study on the use of new electronic tools in managing multipartner project documentation in the construction industry (Sulankivi et al., 2002) the major finding was that significant qualitative benefits as well as benefits that can be measured in terms of time, money and quality – the fundamental project goals- can be reached. Based on two project cases (2003) Hameri and Puittinen argue that an integrated distributed engineering environment results in efficiency improvement in terms of key project goals that is accuracy of delivery, cost control and compliance with customer demand. According to the study www-enabled project business makes it possible to run projects with leaner organizations through better project knowledge management. However, none of the studies actually depicts the use of the system from different project network stakeholder perspectives. Also the key challenges that are to be taken into account in the efficient system implementation and use are not explored.
Summary of the literature review Based on the literature review, we conclude that there is a need for empirical case research for identifying the use and impacts of www systems for different project stakeholders constituting the project network. First, the focus should not only be on listing and quantifying the direct operational benefits brought by the systems but more in identifying and understanding the actual operational and inter-firm process changes taking place after the implementation of www systems. Second, more effort should be placed in studying the efficient practices in the system use bringing competitive advantage to the whole distributed engineering project network. Third, the existing research is more or less dominated by research in the construction industry networks and therefore also other industries’ perspectives are needed.
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METHODOLOGY The research was enabled by collaborating with a Finnish-based company providing www-enabled solutions for the distributed engineering projects. Their system is accessible from anywhere in the world with a www-browser from any workstation connected to Internet. The global access enables co-operation and virtual project teams to deliver projects in virtual project workspaces e.g. deliverables can be submitted for review and commenting, discussion on deliverables can be carried out online and linked to the actual design documents. Project partners can join in on workspaces on demand without specialized software and they can work on several projects for different clients at the same time. Thus, the system can be used for information management, partner collaboration, information process follow-up, and performance analysis. In order to increase our understanding on the system usage and mechanisms through which the potential benefits of the www system deployment realize a multiple case study was conducted. Research questions of the study are formulated as follows: RQ1: RQ2: RQ3:
How are www systems used in distributed engineering projects? How does the www system influence the operative effectiveness in distributed engineering projects? How does the www system contribute to the competitive advantage in distributed engineering projects?
Data collection As the research was explorative in nature qualitative methods were deemed more appropriate. First, an extensive pre-study was conducted to gain an adequate level of application knowledge and verified building blocks for the questionnaire. This stage included literature review, as well as specialist interviews in terms of the system. The second stage was carried out by interviewing representatives from 10 companies in the Finnish marine and pulp and paper industry that operate in complex project environments. These in-depth pre-structured interviews were carried out face-to-face. The interviewed companies to the second stage were selected in a manner that they represented both selected industries and all the three positions in the project network that are end customers, engineering offices and system suppliers. 5 of the companies operate mainly in the marine industry and 5 in the pulp and paper industry. However, as can be seen from the Figure 1, some of the companies serve both these sectors. The sample included 2 end customers, 5 engineering offices and 3 systems suppliers. Sample Marine
Pulp&Paper End customer
End customer
Engineering office
Supplier
Engineering office
Engineering office
Engineering office
Engineering office
Supplier
Supplier
Figure 1. Interviewed companies
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Data analysis The data was analyzed in two successive phases. First within case analyses were performed to assess how application is used and what benefits and challenges can be identified related to the application use in individual companies. After analyzing each of the cases separately, the cases were compared with each other to identify potential patterns between companies using the application. In the cross-case analysis we were especially interested in two issues. First, we were looking for patterns related to the position of the company in the project network. Second, we wanted to know if user experience of the application impacts on the realized benefits and challenges. Table 1 presents the basic information related to the wwwenabled project document management application use within the sample. Table 1. Basic information on the application use with the sample End customer EC1 EC2 Engineering office EO1 EO2 EO3 EO4 EO5 System supplier SS1 SS2 SS3
Users inside the
Users of project
Number of external
Number of external
The share of projects in which the
company
personnel (%)
companies
users
application used (%)
2004 2004
50 30
100 % 100 %
10 5
50 30
20 50
1998 1999 2000 2001 1996
300 200 30 300 2000
100 % 90 % 15 % 85 % 40 %
27 10 7 20 20
350 40 20 100 100
100 100 20 20 80
2004 1998 2002
500 400 10
20 % 90 % 10 %
0 0 0
0 0 0
60 50 20
Implementation year
A note on validity and reliability Concerns regarding validity and reliability are particularly important for case-based research (Yin, 1989; Ellram, 1996; Meredith, 1998; Voss, 2002). External validity reflects how accurately the results represent the phenomenon studied, establishing generalisability of results (Yin, 1981). In this study, generalisability, as recommended by Yin (1994) has been enhanced by including multiple in-depth cases in the study that represented different industries and different position in the project network. The second issue in research design quality – reliability – addresses the repeatability of the experiment, and whether replication is possible and will achieve the same results. Pilot interviews were used to refine the research content and procedure before data collection phase. Additionally, the informants were sent a copy of the interview guide beforehand, so they knew the types of questions and the type of documentation that may be requested. To further corroborate the reliability, a case study database was established, which included a copy of the complete interview guide for each case and detailed summary write-ups of each case. Construct validity addresses establishment of the appropriate operational measures for the concepts studied. One way to deal with construct validity, according to Yin (1994), is to return the case study reports to the informants for verification. Respective company personnel reviewed all 14 case descriptions before the across-case analysis stage. Multiple sources of evidence were used when available that also enhanced construct validity. RESULTS The result section first describes issues related to the use of www systems in distributed engineering projects. This analysis is followed by the discussion about the benefits and challenges related to the system use in project networks. Benefits are divided into operative benefits and more strategic benefits that are presumed to bring competitive advantage to companies operating in project business.
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System use Within our sample companies, knowledge intensive engineering offices have been most actively adopting new www-enabled systems and can be characterized as the coordinators and dominators of the system utilization within the entire project network. The early application adoption during the late 90’s was more or less dominated by those engineering offices that were actively involved in the system development. It was realized that most of the early adapters of the www system in Finland had close co-operation with the company that has actively been developing the www-tool and is today one of the major player in the Finnish market. The main driving force for the use within the engineering offices was stemming from the experienced operational problems with document management in terms of “dispersed project documentation taking time to manage”, “working based on old information leading to extra costs” and “tedious document change processes”. More recently, the other potential benefits of the system have gradually clarified and as a representative from a large marine contracting company stated: ”First, we needed a document management system, since we did not have it. Later we understood that what we have is also a project collaboration tool.” This collaboration tool runs information flow between project partners and makes sure that the right people receive the right information when needed. It automatically keeps project partners at all times aware of changes to critical deliverables in the project workspace. Additionally, it is important in the document review and commenting processes as well as in final approval stages. The types and shares of documents stored in the application among the case companies are presented in Table 2. Table 2. Document types stored in the application Document type Drawings Memos Minutes Instructions Quality policies Project e-mails Manuals Project plans Project follow-up repots Approval and audit documents
% of companies 100 % 91 % 91 % 91 % 82 % 82 % 73 % 64 % 64 % 64 %
As the system use was analyzed in more detail within the case companies, three levels of project document management could be recognized: 1. “document sharing” with www-enabled centralized document management, 2. “collaboration” with active use of www systems in stakeholder collaboration, and 3. “project management support” with application use in e.g. document exchange time-table follow up. The actual www systems can be used purely in internal and external centralized document management, “document sharing” being currently typical of end customers and system suppliers. In our sample one end customer (EC1) and two system suppliers (SS1 and SS3) represent this mode. Companies in “document sharing” mode utilize the system in projects mainly by exchanging documents. In more active use mode, “collaboration”, the system is employed actively in project stakeholder collaboration with other project network actors entailing also the use of centralized document management. The companies advanced to this category in our sample are engineering offices (EO2 and
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EO4), one end customer (EC2) and one system supplier (SS2). Yet, some end customers and system suppliers were expressing wishes to be able to proceed to the mode of active stakeholder collaboration. This mode of use entails active partner collaboration including system integration to e-mail and paper documents, agreed document approval processes and information delivery task delegation in the partner network. Finally, there are companies in the “project management support” mode who use vigorously the various features of the application utilizing it e.g. in the actual progress follow-up of projects and employing the information collected in the system in their process bottle-neck recognition and streamlining. In this usage mode companies are then utilizing the features of the system in inter-firm project management processes. From our case companies three engineering offices (EO1, EO2 and EO5) had proceeded to this mode. However, it must be kept in mind that the needs and objectives of the system use are totally different in terms of the company network positions. This indicates that for example, end customers do not currently feel pressured for employing the most advanced use modes. Yet, due to the trend of centralizing project deliveries to only a few suppliers, the networks the system suppliers have to manage have widened. This will most probably lead to an increasing need and extended use of application among system suppliers as well, which was expressed by all system supplier representatives in our study. In terms of the system use, the effects of the system were also examined by investigating the changes the system has brought to the companies in terms of operation and processes. As the cases were analyzed, an interesting notion was made: the system implementation does not require any major process modifications, but changes that take place are mainly operational. These include storing the documents in the application instead of a file system and the changed structures in the information search. Then, after the application use has stabilized, gradual shaping of project processes starts as the features of application are utilized. It was reported that the use of the www system standardizes the operational processes leading to better efficiency as experience accumulates from project to project. Further, various folder and document structures were defined more systematically as well as the communication between the project partners became more structured including project follow-up practices. The system use impacts also partner selection. Companies stated that they request their partners to be capable of using the www system. Benefits and challenges Benefits in general In identifying the benefits brought by the application, the interviewees were first requested to select the five most important benefits in the order of significance from a pre-structured list. Clear unity among the case companies was seen as nine of the case companies ranked the benefit of “project documents are available centrally and globally” as the most important benefit of the system. Other important benefits identified were the comprehensive control of project documents, easier and more visible collaboration with suppliers and customers, fast communication on changes and change management of documents and more easily found and better organized documents (Table 3). Table 3. Benefits of www system Benefit Project documents are available centrally and globally Project documents are more comprehensively under control Collaboration with suppliers and customers is easier and more visible Fast communication on changes and change management Documents can be found more easily and better organized
Rank 1 2 3 4 5
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In the second stage we asked respondents to analyze the benefits on a more detailed level by preclassifying them into four categories: financial and operational measures, project processes, information flow and collaboration in the project network. The respondents evaluated the system effects on a Likert scale (1-7). The averages are presented in Table 4. Table 4. Evaluations of the application effects on a Likert scale (1-7), 1= strong negative impact, 7= strong positive impact Financial and operational measures Project "hazzle costs" Customer satisfaction Project communication costs New customers Project administrative costs Amount of errors during a project Keeping in schedule Project delivery reliability Project profit Budgeting accuracy Project hit-rate Total project business costs Project lead time Project processes Fastness of information sharing Systematic project processes The efficiency of time use Efficiency in reacting to changes Fastness of decision making Discipline in design changes Follow-up of project state through the ratio of completed project documents Recognition of bottle-necks Amount of labour input Information flow Real-time information Time used in searching information Systematic information sharing Time used in collecting and sharing information Correctness of information Time used in transferring information from one system to another Collaboration in the network The depth of co-operation with project partners Strifes among project partners Awareness of the project team operations in your company The stability of co-operation with project partners Awareness of the project team operations in other companies Comprehension of project stakeholders on joint project goals
Average value 5.5 5.4 5.3 5.1 5.0 5.0 4.8 4.7 4.5 4.4 4.4 4.3 4.3 6.3 5.6 5.3 5.2 5.2 5.2 4.9 4.8 4.4 6.1 6.1 5.8 5.2 5.1 4.8 4.9 4.8 4.7 4.6 4.6 4.5
Of the four benefit categories, the benefits in terms of information flow were regarded truly considerable by the respondents. The effects on “fastness of information”, “real-time information”, “time used in searching information” received an average grade over 6. It can then be concluded that the effects on information management are considered as the most information benefit brought by the system. Second, clearly positive impacts were also seen in the category of project processes. The system was regarded to improve e.g. the “systematicy of project processes”, “the efficiency in reacting to changes” and “discipline in design changes”. Www systems thus noticeably support the efficiency of project management processes.
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In terms of effects in the class of financial and operational measures especially the impacts on project “hazzling” and communication costs can be seen as significant. “The typical hazzling is dramatically reduced as information no longer has to be searched from diverse places. Furthermore the project engineers are now constantly aware that the information they use is the latest one.” The communication costs are substantially reduced as the need for printing papers and postal services is declined by electronic approval methods. According to a cost analysis of one of the engineering offices, the printing and print paper costs had reduced by 30% after the application was implemented. Yet, many interviewees considered the evaluations in terms of this category as difficult. They had problems in differentiating on what is the true contribution of the www system and what impacts e.g. other process developments have had. In the category of collaboration in the network each of the statements received an average under 5. One issue affecting this is that many of the engineering offices had had problems in enticing the other companies to utilize the system in a systematized manner. Further, from a system supplier’s perspective the actual system is mainly seen as a tool supporting information management. The effects on collaboration in the network are thought to realize in a longer run and are seen as an extra benefit brought by the system. The benefits were also analyzed from the viewpoint of the company’s role in a cross-case analysis setting. Especially the engineering offices highlighted the positive effects on new customer relationships. An interesting notion was also the different perspectives on the amount of needed resources. As the end customers and system suppliers see the effects as significantly positive, engineering offices reported increased resource needs: “At first, we experienced a significant increase in the needed resources in terms of handling documentation, classifying it and conducting system definitions.” End customers also brought up the benefits on process bottleneck recognition and the possibility to use the system in the project state follow-up. Interestingly, especially system suppliers highlighted the effects on the stability of cooperation with project partners and on the depth of co-operation with project partners. Strategic benefits The case analyses indicate that as the application use has stabilized, system features can be utilized in shaping the actual project processes both at inter-company level and inside a company. As an engineering office representative stated: “The application features have been utilized in shaping the document management processes in the long run. These are also naturally affected by the way the system is used. Further, with the system it is much more straightforward to control that the agreed process paths and modes of operation are truly followed.” In the project network level, engineering offices are the primus motors in the inter-firm process development. They promote the use of the www system within their project partners and lead the development work to streamline the document management processes and collaboration practices within the network. The application also stands for the engineering offices as a tool enabling efficient use of external resources in the design phase and in this way enhances flexibility and shortens project lead times. As the companies have true visibility on each others’ design process phases, paralleling of different phases i.e. more efficient harnessing of concurrent engineering method becomes a possibility. This way possible overlaps in the design process can be eliminated. This in turn enables the decreases in total project lead times. True design process visibility also provides remarkably better inter-company collaboration possibilities, which in turn results in time and cost savings. Through these mechanisms we conclude that the collective capability of the total project network enhances by eliminating inefficiencies and improving value. This in turn brings competitive advantage to the network utilizing the system.
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Challenges The experienced challenges in terms of the system were also analyzed. Here, replacing old ways of operating and enticing the employees to use the application were regarded as major challenges despite the case company position in the network. Internal change resistance is thus experienced as the main challenge in the system use, as parallel use of old paper and file system processes seem to be enticing among the case companies. Part of this resistance is clearly linked to the trustworthiness and flexibility of the system: “Part of our engineers prefer using the old file systems, since they have experienced problems in the interfaces of design applications and the www system.” In other words design engineers in some cases prefer working with file systems, as they are regarded as easier and more straightforward modes of operation. One reason behind this is that the practical benefits of using the www system do not always directly realize to design engineers. Some of the case companies had also experienced unclarities related to the approval process legality and responsibility issues. Yet, it is evident that the organizational culture is strongly related to the state of experienced resistance: a culture that has not embraced IT is thus far more challenging than an environment in which adopting new tools and systems is a part of everyday operations. However, the cross-case analysis indicates that in companies employing strict control mechanisms approved by the top management, the parallel usage of manual and www system was only seen as a transitory symptom. In turn, there were companies letting the project managers freely decide, whether the system is used in their project. This mode of operation has led to a state of suspense among the project unit personnel. As a result, the potential benefits that the www system could bring do not realize as effectively as in those companies where the application usage is strongly supported and controlled. Also eight out of ten companies experienced enticing other project network members to use the application as a clear challenge. Especially, the system suppliers criticized the use of the www system. The problem within them is related to the multiplicity of the various systems they have to use with their customers often referred to as the unique problem of “one-to-N”: “As we have tens of parallel projects running, we are to log in and use various different engineering offices’ systems, which makes this process relatively tedious and difficult for us.” In other words the suppliers are struggling with the problem of working with dozens of tools and data formats of their various and diverse clients and project partners. Many of the companies see thus the external interface standardization as the most essential question in the near future. Www-enabled document management applications should be able to communicate with each other, which would remove the need for exchanging and loading document packages between various systems. Further, system suppliers experienced that the engineering offices have purely ignored the educational side in the efficient application use: “Usually, when a new project starts we only receive the system IDs from an engineering office and then we are on our own. This places us enormous challenges, as in every project e.g. the folder structure and other communication practices vary.” This seemed to be a repeated pattern in every case project, which undoubtedly prohibits the ultimate utilization of all the potential benefits the system could provide. What is then essential to address in the project planning stage is the use of the system and proper education and communication on it to the network participants. To conclude, it appears that many of the experienced challenges are common and typical of any major change initiative taken: e.g. top management support is critical in the needed cultural change and that effective training is a key to success. DISCUSSION The aim of this study was to better understand how new www systems influence distributed engineering projects. The study first recognizes three levels of www system usage within the sample companies: 1) www-enabled centralized document management i.e. “document sharing”, 2) active use of www system
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in stakeholder collaboration i.e. “collaboration”, and 3) “project management support”, where companies actively both utilize www system’s features to recognize document bottlenecks and improve processes, and use feedback information in project follow-up management. The results indicate that engineering offices as knowledge intensive companies have more often proceeded to the “project management support” level. In addition to acting as coordinators and dominators of the www system use in project networks, they are able to exploit the improved visibility of document management. End customers and system suppliers, on the other hand, are in the “document sharing” or in “collaboration” mode and use the system more passively as engineering offices. However, due to the trend of centralizing project deliveries to only a few suppliers, the networks the system suppliers have to manage have widened and they are expected to utilize the more advanced features of the www systems as well. Analysis of the potential benefits of the www system use indicates that direct operational benefits realize for each project stakeholder after the system implementation. Most important of these are better control of project documents, easier and more visible stakeholder collaboration and fast communication on changes. In terms of project costs in the short term, especially the effects on project “hazzle costs” and communication costs are seen as significant. Decreases in time used in searching information and improved information sharing practices are also identified as key benefits. These changes are thus mainly operational and related directly to the improved information sharing and management processes. The benefits and changes brought by the application evolve as the application adoption in the network proceeds and the application use experience cumulates. Of interest is that in the longer run, significant improvement in terms of the project network capability can be identified. First, this is due to the system enabling the concurrent engineering approach and paralleling of different design phases, as the companies have on-time visibility on each other’s design processes. Second, the system enables efficient deployment of external resources, which shortens total lead times and brings noticeable flexibility and responsiveness to the project network. The application thus supports distributed projects by acting as a facilitator of true networking and reducing lead times, one of the key project success measures. However, to realize these benefits process changes are necessary. Further, the features of the application can also be utilized in the development of project management practises and inter-firm business process standardization. To conclude, the application and its usage are thus gradually modified to better support the most optimal document sharing and collaboration processes. Yet, there are essential challenges related to the system use in project networks. In addition to change resistance in terms of system use, parallel electronic and paper-based processes, obscurities related to the approval process legality and responsibilities, issues related to system security and poor external interface standardization are still experienced as problems. Furthermore, our results show that companies lack competences in network operations. In many cases the www system was considered as a tool that improves operations within the individual company and the needs and wants of other network partners were ignored. To summarize, collaborating in a network is also a question of managing the different interests of project network members. Utilizing the tool in an integrative manner requires a joint transformation effort in which the engineering offices should play a leading role. Yet, within each project network organization the impetus for committing to the use of the tool should come from the senior management. The contribution of the study is summarized in Figure 2. First, after the system implementation, operational benefits are realized for companies in “document sharing” and “collaboration” modes. As the www system use experience cumulates, process changes take place contributing to the competitive advantage of companies advanced to the “project management support” mode. Yet, an important issue to understand is that the process changes also have an effect on the www system tool and use in the longer run. The paper thus provides insights to the mechanisms through which the potential benefits of the
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system deployment realize to project network stakeholders. Furthermore, new understanding of the opportunities and challenges related to the www systems in distributed engineering networks is provided.
Operational benefits through: Www system implementation
• Efficient and fast information sharing (Time)
Competitive advantage through: Www system usage experience
• Decreased amount of errors (Quality) Operational changes
•Decrease in project costs (Cost)
“Document sharing”
Process changes
“Collaboration”
• Enhanced networking possibilities • Enhanced paralleling of design processes •True virtual project teams
“Project management support”
Figure 2. Summary of the findings The study presented in this paper has limitations. First, the sample of companies included in the study was selected by expert assessment and is biased towards companies willing to discuss and share results openly. Second, the viewpoint in this paper was more on single companies rather than on the entire project networks. Third, in this type of research it is always challenging to separate the effects of the system implementation from the various process changes that are happening at the companies. Last, it was realized that when discussing about the benefits and challenges some interviewees had difficulties distinguish between internal processes and inter-company processes. However, the findings of this study present an opportunity to further develop understanding on the underlying mechanisms of how www-enabled systems bring competitive advantage to companies operating in distributed engineering project environments. To bring the research forward, we recommend such case studies where complete project networks are analyzed. REFERENCES Construction Confederation. 2002. An Introduction to E-Business in Construction. Construction House, London. Ellram, L., 1996. The use of case study method in logistics research. Journal of Business Logistics, 17(2), pp. 93-138. Eloranta, E., Hameri, A-P., Lahti, M., 2001. Improved project management through improved document management. Computers in Industry 45, pp. 231-243. Hameri, A-P., Puittinen, R., 2003. WWW-enabled knowledge management for distributed engineering projects. Computers in Industry Vol. 50., Iss. 2, pp. 165-177.
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Meredith, 1998, Building operations management theory through case and field research. Journal of Operations Management, 16(4), pp. 441-454. Morris, P., and Pinto, J., 2004. The Wiley Guide to Managing Projects. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Sulankivi, K., Lakka, A., Luedke, M., 2002. Project management in the concurrent engineering environment. VTT Publications 469. Tam. C.M., 1999. Use of the Internet to enhance construction communication: Total Information Transfer System. International Journal of Project Management, Vol 17., Iss. 2, pp. 107-111. Voss, C., Tsikriktsis, N., Frohlich, M., 2002. Case research in operations management. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 22(2), pp. 195-219. Walker A., and Newcombe, R., 2000. The positive use of power to facilitate the completion of a major construction project: A case study. Construction Management and Economics 18(1):37-44. Yin, R., 1981. The case study crisis: some answers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 26, pp. 58-65 Yin, R., 1994. Case Study Research. Design and Methods. Sage Publications, Beverly Hills 2. Zack, J., 2002. Electronic project documentation: Legal and practical problems. AACE International Transactions. Morgantown., p. CD61.
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