Proximity in Operations

The time to work together is sooner rather than later
(Courtesy of www.engineeringdaily.net)

The strongest operations will purposely locate the engineering as close as possible to the manufacturing operations.  It has been proven over and again that this encourages dialogue between he two groups which benefits the operation.  But what about  within an engineering organization?  Are there good ways to set up an organization to maximize the engineering talent?

One of my earlier posts relayed my positive experience with Integrated Product Teams (IPTs).  This involved having members from different functional groups together in one group to successfully design and support a product.  However it is not enough to have these members in one group.  They must sit together or near each other to make it work.

At Boeing I was a structural design engineer.  My closest associate I worked with was the stress analyst.  It was our job to work together to develop a statically and dynamically robust design that would be eventually manufactured.  So he and I sat next to each other , even sharing a common table between us.  This allowed us to lay out drawings and sketches to discuss design details immediately rather than travelling across an office to work together.  Other functional members sat close by so even though I interacted with them less frequently, they were close by to discuss details.

Better designs evolve when everyone resides near each other
(Courtesy www.astrocenter.tamu.edu)

Many companies still embrace they idea of  the same functions (i.e. stress, design, manufacturing, etc) sitting together in an engineering operation.  But this idea allows groups to become an "us" versus "them" philosophy that stagnates production.  It is better to sit together and then "we" can use engineering skills to a better advantage.