Copyright © IFAC Infonnation Control Problems in Manufacturing, Salvador, Brazil, 2004
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MODELS TO SPLIT UP AND TO INTEGRA TE COMPETENCIES SYSTEMS IN DESIGN ACTIVITIES MANAGEMENT
Eric Bonjour, Maryvonne Dulmet,
Fran~ois
Lhote
Groupe Pilotage et Modelisation des Activites de Conception- Laboratoire d'Automatique de Besanfon Unite Mixte de Recherche CNRS - ENSMM - UFC 25, Rue A. Savary - 25000 Besanfon (F) rei. (33) 381402811 - Fax. 33381402809 - E-mail:
[email protected];
[email protected]
Design activities require complex organizations to support the production of technical objects about systems that tend to be more and more complex too. The management of design projects and of their skill-networks requires models to take into account the complexity of competencies systems . Socio-technical systems management has to define an appropriate organization to create synergy between competencies, processes, products and technologies, at different levels within the company or between companies. This paper proposes models to help project managers or skill-networks managers to organize competencies systems, i.e., to split up objectives they have in charge in terms of collective or individual competencies. It contributes to articulate a manager's point of view with an actor's point of view . The validation of this model is achieved in the framework of a research contract with a French car enterprise, in a specific field of car engineering processes . The final aims of our research works are about the design of a management device of the engineering competency system.
Copyright © 2004 IFAC Key words: socio-technical systems management, human systems, competency systems modeling, competency management, design engineering
- to manage actors' competencies (human resource management) - to develop competencies and knowledge in their own domains and skill-networks (knowledge management, skill development) - to develop new solutions regarding new strategic requirements (innovation management)
1. INTRODUCTION Companies are facing changeable environments, different sources of uncertainty and an increasing importance of human dimensions (cognitive, social, organizational, affective). Considered like one of the main sources of competitive advantages, competency and knowledge become key-notions to increase the enterprise's performance (Argyris, 1995), (Faure & all, 1999), (Hermine, 1996), (Non aka, 1995), (Spencer, 1993), (Wielinga, 1992).
The notion of competency has many definitions in the literature (Levy-Boyer, 1996), (LeBoterf, 200 1) but several common characteristics have been highlighted. A competency is linked to a finalized action (to reach a goal, to carry out a task, to perform a mission .... ). It depends on a context. It puts in interactions several kinds of cognitive components (concepts, knowledge, know-how ... ) and external resources (tools, networks .. . ). Competency may be required and then, referred to a given task (or mission) that needs to be carried out in the future . Competency may be acquired and recognized, embodied by an actor (one or several persons) and then, available to perform a given similar mission.
Today's industrial objectives are to manage a permanent increase in performance: to reduce the "time to market", to reduce the product development costs, to increase innovation, quality, reactivity, organizational learning To meet these requirements, some Managers' objectives and actions are then - to optimize the project organization and the assignment of missions to the actors (project management)
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Concerning the design activities, systems which have to be designed as well as design activity organizations are very complex. Activities are collective (strong relationships between actors) and require co-operation, iterations with discussions to find solutions. Value is added thanks to the contribution of the individual actors to the collective actors (competency integration, results integration). A part of the integration is described thanks to the definition of missions and another part is emerging from the discussions between the actors . The major issue of managers is to design a coherent organization to meet customer's requirements with the highest performance (quality, costs, delay .. .) in the short term and to manage the development of relevant competencies in the long term . Few works exist about this topic . We call it a bifocal management. This paper proposes articulated models to help managers to split up and to integrate competencies systems in design activity management. First part points out the industrial context of our research works. Second part presents the conceptual framework and different models to split up and integrate competencies systems. Industrial examples illustrate the different phases of modeling. 2. CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES Our works take place in the framework of a research contract that began in 1999, with a French car enterprise. They are aimed at supporting some processes concerning coherent modeling and management of competencies systems. They are based on the analysis of engineering activities. In a middle term perspective, the requirements of this car enterprise concern the characterization of processes which lead to the development of competencies used in the field of concurrent engineering for simultaneous product and process design. We have already defined and validated a framework of competency modeling based on a systemic approach . In the long term, our final aims are (1) to develop a coherent device to manage the design competencies systems as well as (2) to improve the development of knowledge and competencies and to tend to autoadaptable competencies systems.
only. However, common representations (related to common global intentions) are necessary (perrin 1999) to ensure a coherent integration of individual, local results in the collective, global actor. The major features of design activities are as follows : - problems are not completely defined in the beginning. The context of the design (market, technology, collaborators, managers, process ... ) are different sources of uncertainty . Therefore, during the whole project, the solver will require information issued from its environment (tools, partners, customers, ... to define its problem and to reduce uncertainty. - the parameters and their relationships are not split up into independent sub-systems. Sub-systems may correspond to different ski\1s (or competencies). Then, these competencies are interdependent. For example, during the design of the architecture of the front axle in a car, the design of the suspension has to meet mechanical requirements to ensure comfortable and stable behavior on the road but its volume depends on the car architecture and on the volume of the other sub-systems of the front axle and its mechanical parameters are correlated with its volume and with elastic parameters of the wheels or of the no-roll bar. - the solution is only satisfactory but not optimum (Darse 2(01). The designer has to make choice among acceptable solutions according to performance criteria. There is no completely defined method (or algorithm) to find this solution. The design activity is based on an action plan that is progressively built during the activity, at the same time other actors define mutual requirements according to their local solutions and their own actions plan . The solution emerges from different unforeseeable consensus or trade-off. - these interactions between actors imply numerous iterations and it is difficult to split up the design process into different tasks or responsibility centers. - the solution evaluations are carried out at different levels: by the designer, by his (her) collaborator separately (from different points of view, heterogeneous criteria), by his collective actor and by external actors who are in charge of the represention of the customers' voice. The design is the progressive determination of the product and its process, which ensure the convergence of several actors' activities towards a satisfactory and coherent solution. It is an organization of individual problem solving integrated thanks to negotiations between actors globally coordinated by the deployment of common objectives split up into several missions .
This paper presents our works about the identification of the individual or collective competencies (with a deployment approach) and about the definition of the collective competencies systems structure (with an integration approach).
We will use the term of generic mission to name the missions that the actor has to perform successively with the respect of the same action framework and of the same kind of task. Expectations concerning the product have been modified in an iterative and co\1ective activity due to the progressive process of problem solving. The actor' s intermediate results are useful to other actors to decrease their uncertainty level and then, to improve the quality of their current
3. SPECIFICITY OFDESIGN ACTIVITIES Design is often considered as a problem-solving activity that requires a collective actor. The problem specifications are progressively defined in the relationships of mutual requirements (De Tersac, 1996). Each individual actor builds his (her) own representation of the problem by taking into account the dimensions that are relevant with his intentions
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expectations. Thus during a generic design mission, an actor may have to perform several instances of his mission, but with current expectations that are lightly different at each iteration. The allocation and the acknowledgement are not performed for each iteration. The actor is entrusted with a generic mission, he has to perform it several times during his design activity.
situation
ITFRATIONS intennediald results
competency of the actor
Collective actor: This is a group (or a team) who is in charge of performing a mission or a set of missions and who acts permanently, temporarily or occasionally at the service of an enterprise. There are collective actors of various levels: binomials, teams and workgroups, project structures, skill-networks, functional departments ... A collective actor may be split up into smaller collective actors and/or individual actors. An individual actor may take part in different collective actor. This concise definition is closed to that of Cohen et al. (1997), which is more precise: "a team is a collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks, who share responsibility for outcomes, who see themselves and who are seen by others as an intact social entity embedded in one or more larger social systems (for example, business unit or the corporation), and who manage their relationships across organizational boundaries."
Global organization (at the level of the enterprise): it is linked to the strategic management of the enterprise, (Pralahad, 1990]. Strategy is defined by global objectives at different terms. Objectives have to be specified in terms of strategic competencies.
obtained results
Figure 1: specificity of design activities The following concepts concern any type of actor. We identify three levels in the design activity: - the actor's relationships with his collective actor. At this level the actor furnishes intermediate results which are the result of negotiations, choices of elements which have to be frozen or redefined, but he has to let some degrees of freedom to the upstream designer. The actors build mutual requirements thanks to their cooperation; - the actor's action to meet the expectations of his mission inside an iteration. This action is of the same kind for each iteration, i.e. he uses the same cognitive structure to lead his action. - the acknowledgement of competencies in the field of design assumes that we are able to characterize and quantify the expected contribution of the actor to the collective performance. 4. MODELS FOR DESIGN ACTIVITIES MANAGEMENT 4.1 Conceptual framework In an enterprise, we distinguish between three levels of competency modeling in relation with three kinds of actors: individual actor, collective actor and the global Organization (enterprise). Individual actor: This is a person who is in charge of performing a mission or a set of missions and who acts permanently, temporarily or occasionally at the service of a considered enterprise. This actor is characterized by his (her) corpus of competencies (or knowledge and skills) and belongs to a recognized skill-network (design and manufacture of diesel engine, architecture and design of the electronic systems, quality management...). In the skillnetwork, each actor shares common representations (terminology, knowledge, rules, identity and value).
Task is " what is to do in the system". It is a set of processing: physical transformation and/or information processing and/or problem solving. It concerns a set of given planned objects (material or immaterial inputs). The objective of the given task is to produce a set of expected outcomes (resulting objects or outputs). Process is a scheduled organization of tasks which have similar objectives on the same flow or the same type of flow (material, information, knowledge, decisional objects ...)". Situation: It corresponds to the context of the actions. According to Theureau (1994), situation is what is meaningful for the actor in his environment. It is steadily changing. In a normal, foreseeable situation, it enables the actor to understand, to plan and to perform the mission . But the situation could be characterized by its variability and by the gap between the forecasts and the actual context. For instance, the given actual inputs are different from the given planned inputs (task variability), unpredictable events may occur... The actor is permanently in interaction with elements of the situation . He has to cope with the actual situation, to identify relevant information flows and to adapt the organization of his action. Mission: A given mission is defined by the Manager and is affected to an actor under his responsibility . It consists of a task referred to a given action framework . An actor is entrusted with this mission. The prescription does not concern "the how" . He has the responsibility to fulfil the mission by determining the relevant organization of finalized actions. In the field of design activities, we consider that a mission is an artifact of the Organization. This
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artifact is complex, evolutive and results from a negotiated building between the actor who is in charge of carrying out this mission and the manager who has received delegation from the Organization. So, during the design activity, the mission definition is likely to be modified, along with the design process, to adapt the collective organization to external and internal events or requirements.
The coordination allows to guarantee the activity's consistency. A mission of n-level is assigned to an individual or to a team. Through a coordination plan (identified on figure 2 as transfer models), which is architecture of actions frame, n-level mission is split up into n-I level missions assigned to limited teams and to individual. The coordination carries out the differentiation of the roles among the actors. During the integration process, local results are integrated in global results (these are also transfer models), and they will put in light operational competencies. During the action we have the equilibration of the schemes of the individual or collective actors, and the activity is translated through actions frames . Then the results of the n-l level missions are synthesized to provide results of n-level missions .
Actions framework: The manager is not able to detennine a complete characterization of a considered situation (it is not possible). He has to choose relevant and critical elements according to the task of the mission and to the actor's autonomy . Today, due to the situation complexity and the high level of skills needed, the actor has a large autonomy to perfonn his mission . Tasks and missions can be allocated to an actor with various degrees of explicitation according to the chosen actor. Competency (from an external point of view) An external view considers competency as a black box which provides for a successful finalized action, in answer to two inputs : on the one hand, action aims, i.e . expected results (perhaps with constraints and performance criteria), on the other hand, a determined action framework, i.e. key-elements of the situation . If these inputs are specified by the Organization in terms of a mission, the associated competency is called operational competency. An operational competency is an appreciation or "acknowledgement" made on a given actor, by a determined judge related to a defined mission (or finalized actions). It is related to a successful mission or a class of couples {aims; framework} . (See [BON 01] for more details)
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