Craig Loftus

Managing by E-Mail: What E-mail Can Do for Engineering Project Management

E-mails are, rightly or wrongly, a staple of the information and communication technology for managing work and collaborative activities. This paper examines the value of the content of e-mail at a project level rather than at the often-studied level of the individual user. The dataset consists of e-mails authored by an engineering team associated with a large, complex, long term, systems integration project, typical of the aerospace, marine, and defense sectors. The research applied a qualitative content analysis methodology to classify the content (what the e-mail contains) and purpose (why the e-mail was sent) of the e-mail in the dataset. The results of the content analysis were compared and contrasted with secondary evidence from interviews and project documentation to enable a time-phased analysis. The findings show that classifying e-mail content by the categories of management, information, and problem-solving transactions revealed signatures that align with project phases and, more importantly, problems encountered. Finally, we found that the purpose of e-mail is not necessarily consistent with the designated job role or responsibility of the sender or recipient. This paper contributes to empirical data on the relation between communication and project performance and the changing nature of e-mail communication throughout the lifecycle of a project. The findings point to a new way to leverage e-mail content to “manage by e-mail”.

Design of an Information System for Metrology Contents

Dimensional and form inspections are key to the manufacturing and assembly of products. Product verification can involve a number of different measuring instruments operated using their dedicated software. Typically, each of these instruments with their associated software is more suitable for the verification of a pre-specified quality characteristic of the product than others. The number of different systems and software applications to perform a complete measurement of products and assemblies within a manufacturing organisation is therefore expected to be large. This number becomes even larger as advances in measurement technologies are made. The idea of a universal software application for any instrument still appears to be only a theoretical possibility. A need for information integration is apparent. In this paper, a design of an information system to consistently manage (store, search, retrieve, search, secure) measurement results from various instruments and software applications is introduced. Two of the main ideas underlying the proposed system include abstracting structures and formats of measurement files from the data so that complexity and compatibility between different approaches to measurement data modelling is avoided. Secondly, the information within a file is enriched with meta-information to facilitate its consistent storage and retrieval. To demonstrate the designed information system, a web application is implemented.