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DSM Tutorial - Team-based DSM |
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Team-Based DSM
This approach is used for organizational analysis and design based on information flow
among various organizational entities. Individuals and groups participating in a
project are the elements being analyzed (rows and columns in the matrix). A
Team-based DSM is constructed by identifying the required communication flows and
representing them as connections between organizational entities in the matrix. For
the modeling exercise it is important to specify what is meant by information flow among
teams. The table, below, presents several possible ways information flow can be
characterized.
| Flow Type |
Possible Metrics |
| Level of Detail |
Sparse (documents, e-mail) to rich (models, face-to-face) |
| Frequency |
Low (batch, on-time) to high (on-line, real) |
| Direction |
one-way to two-way |
| Timing |
Early (preliminary, incomplete, partial) to late (final) |
The matrix can be manipulated in order to obtain clusters of highly interacting teams
and individuals while attempting to minimize inter-cluster interactions. The obtained
groupings represent a useful framework for organizational design by focusing on the
predicted communication needs of different players.
For an application example, refer to McCord and Eppinger (1993).
They propose a team-based DSM to analyze the organizational structure
necessary for an improved automobile engine development process.
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