Julie Stal-Le Cardinal

Collaborative Decision Making: Complementary Developments of a Model and an Architecture as a Tool Support

Recent years we can hear a lot about cooperative decision-making, group or collaborative decision-making. These types of decisions are the consequences of developed working conditions: geographical dispersion, team working, and concurrent working. In the article we present two research works concerning two different collective decision situations: face-to-face decision-making and synchronous distributed decision-making. These two research studies adopt different approaches in order to support decision-making process, in view to different research objectives. Nevertheless, the conclusions show complementary aspect of these two studies.

Towards a Methodology for Managing Competencies in Virtual Teams - A Systemic Approach

Virtual instruments and tools are future trends in Engineering which are a response to the growing complexity of engineering tasks, the facility of communication and strong collaborations on the international market. Outsourcing, off-shoring, and the globalization of organisations’ activities have resulted in the formation of virtual product development teams. Individuals who are working in virtual teams must be equipped with diversified competencies that provide a basis for virtual team building. Thanks to the systemic approach of the functional analysis our paper responds to the need of a methodology of competence management to build virtual teams that are active in virtual design projects in the area of New Product Development (NPD).

Collaborative Decision-making in Design Project Management. A Particular Focus on Automotive Industry

The Project Definition phase in New Product and Process Development (NPPD) is decisive because the project outcomes depend upon the success of this phase, i.e. capability to define ambitious and feasible objectives corresponding to the market. The two main research questions are: how to support collaborative decision-making in the early stages of NPPD, and what an adapted project management approach for these phases is. Research methodology used in this study is case-based using semi-structured interviews and participation/observation of working groups. The case study concerns 7 managers or engineers working in this phase and 9 vehicle development projects. The findings of this research point out the need for a new management paradigm and a proposition of a project management framework for the early stages of NPPD.

Risk assessment method in project actor choice

The choice of the actors who are assigned to a project is crucial for the project as it involves a nonnegligible part of its future performance. Risk analysis mainly focuses on risks which may occur during the execution process and not during this important actor choice process. We argue that it is possible to improve this classical analysis by two additional ways. First, our work identifies the main types of risks which may occur during the decision-making process, focused on actor choice. Second, we analyse the potential propagation of a wrong actor choice and its global consequences. We are then able to correct the estimated value of the risk by considering its position as a node in the complex project network. The results obtained through this research are promising in terms of identification of new risks and in terms of reestimation of some risks. This methodology has been applied in two industrial situations: Vallourec Group and Peugeot-Citroen.

Virtual teams challenging human and technical Web 2.0 dimensions

Our article responds to the need of a system to build virtual teams that are active in virtual design projects in the area of new product development (NPD). It focuses on a methodology to provide an Aided Virtual Team Building System (Aided VTB System). Requirements of this Aided VTB System are defined and the fulfilment of their demand by appropriate, relevant and recent techniques as solutions that are discussed with help of an enquiry of 34 virtual team leaders. Based on the house of quality, one of the outcomes of the Aided VTB System is to provide recommendations, guidelines and even best practices for virtual teams building.

A pragmatic methodology to capture and analyse decision dysfunctions in development projects

The aim of this article is to present the results of our recent work in the field of development projects management. The issue that we have raised is to determine the dysfunction profile of a company. From an approach developed in maintenance, we propound on one hand a generic plan of the decision-making process, and on the other, we recapitulate work connected with competence management, to offer a representation frame of dysfunction sources. This double entry has the advantage of supplying views that take into account the human being, and thus, which are more realistic. Then, on an operational level, we set out an information index card summing up the two previous plans that helps the documentation of decision processes. We apply the associated methodology called SACADO to the case of a company, and finally, we report and examine the results

Continuous Improvement Modeling to Support Enterprise Transformation

Enterprise managers have two important objectives: anticipating the enterprise evolution and mastering its transformation. But it is difficult to choose between available models and prove that the selected model can improve the enterprise performance. The aim of this article is to provide a clear view on enterprise modeling and to build a template for developing process models and enhancing their suitability. The enterprise is addressed from a process point of view, because processes impact different enterprise systems and bring considerable gains. An evaluation of process models based on a functional analysis is proposed. This approach acts as a guide for building models. Great importance is given to the impact of models on the enterprise information system and the enterprise knowledge system. As a result, the proposed modeling template keeps the coherence of these systems, allows control of the information flows and knowledge flows that spread through all of the enterprise processes, and permits the choice between available process models. The application of the theoretical results of this research in an industrial enterprise consolidated the models assessment template and clarified the steps of the continuous improvement cycle to enhance models performances and enterprise processes transformation.

Analysis of Implementation of Care Coordination in a Multi-level Care Provider Organization: A Need for Systems Approaches

Better care coordination is a crucial objective to answer to the rising complexity of healthcare and the associated increase in costs. Process-based organizations is a widely recommended method for achieving this goal. In this article an initiative of implementing a care process in a French public hospital group is analyzed. The procedure to design the care process is documented and the official care process is compared to the current situation in a hospital. This analysis shows how important local parameters are in such projects. The shortcomings of the approach are identified and propositions to overcome these issues are made.

Context management in collaborative decision making in complex design projects

The notion of context seems to be a growing subject in the engineering sciences. Several studies have pointed out the necessity to address the contextual limitations in collaborative design projects. It has been identified as one of the major factors that contribute to inadequate knowledge reuse in design projects. Nevertheless, the definition of the context depends on the subject and the field of application. In this paper, we point out different definitions of the context in artificial intelligence, engineering and cognitive sciences. In this research study we present a proposition for context modelling representing only one part of collaborative decision-making support. The research study presented in this paper is a result of collaboration with one of the French car manufacturers. Within the conceptual model of collaborative decision-making, we propose to integrate the information concerning three different contexts: decision, project and enterprise context. The aim of this model is to help and support the project team in project management.

Simulation Methods in the Healthcare Systems

Healthcare systems can be considered as large-scale complex systems. They need to be well managed in order to create the desired values for its stakeholders as the patients, the medical staff and the industrials working for healthcare. Many simulation methods coming from other sectors have already proved their added value for healthcare. However, based on our experience in the French heath sector (Jean et al. 2012), we found these methods are not widely used in comparison with other areas as manufacturing and logistics. This paper presents a literature review of the healthcare issue and major simulations methods used to address them. This work is design to suggest how more systematic creation of solutions may be performed using complementary methods to resolve a common issue. We believe that this first work can help to better understand the simulation approaches used for health workers, deciders or researchers of any responsibility level.