Modeling engineering interfaces in collaborative activities: A transactional model
Year: 2013
Editor: Udo Lindemann, Srinivasan V, Yong Se Kim, Sang Won Lee, John Clarkson, Gaetano Cascini
Author: Nicquevert, Bertrand; Boujut, Jean-François
Series: ICED
Institution: 1: CERN, Geneva, Switzerland; 2: G-SCOP, Grenoble, France
Page(s): 111-120
ISBN: 978-1-904670-46-9
ISSN: 2220-4334
Abstract
In large projects such as the ATLAS detector at CERN, the complexity of organizational and decision making structures may endanger a safe management of such projects. An analysis of the ATLAS organization was conducted during several years. A map of the decision making structure of one of its sub-projects is presented in the paper. It shows that the so-called technical manager, a middle manager (most of the times an engineer) is in a position of interface and has to deal with complex socio-economic-technical problems. This paper proposes an interface model that aims to grasp the complexity of engineering management situations. Based on hologramic and recursive principles of complexity, a transactional model of the interface is proposed with the types of interfaces that derive from it. Nine types of translations are described together with six types of inward and outward transactions, as well as the exchange spaces established through the interface actor. This model is illustrated through the case study of the project introduced at the beginning of the paper. The conclusion opens towards the pooling of bilateral exchange spaces to the set up trading zones.
Keywords: Interfaces, project management, collaboration, transactional model, translation