Managing the virtual team and controlling effectiveness

The design, manufacture and delivery of a product require even-higher level s of expertise and resource. Companies are finding that better internal and external communications can help leverage these resources to better effect ; hence, there are initiatives such as simultaneous engineering, knowledge management and team working. These are being supported by ever-increasing e xpenditure on Information Technology (IT) infrastructures, such as Intranet s, Extranets and Enterprise Resource Management systems such as SAP-R3. Vir tual Teamworking has been suggested as a new solution, and is the use of IT to support multidisciplinary teamwork between experts separated by distanc e and time. This paper describes current collaborative practices in the aut omotive supply chain, and identifies some crucial issues that need to be ad dressed for successful implementation of virtual teams. Based on these issu es identified from a literature survey and from practical trials and observ ations, an outline methodology for implementing effective virtual teams and managing them successfully is described. Behind the scenes of public decla rations of success in adoption lies a struggle to realize significant benef its. Virtual teaming, to implement concurrent engineering, is not specifica lly addressed in the published literature. This paper focuses on this and u ses data and observations from real teams doing real concurrent engineering work in the automotive industry.