Kaveh Nezamirad Peter G' Higgins

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Human Collaboration in Planning and Scheduling
7th International Workshop on Human Factors in
Planning, Scheduling and Control in
Manufacturing The University of Groningen, The
Netherlands, 13-15 June 2005

• Kaveh Nezamirad Peter G. Higgins
• Simon Dunstall

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Aim

• To define a framework for analysing and modelling
  structure and dynamic processes of human
  collective work in planning and scheduling across
  organisational boundaries

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Focus of the study

• Three levels of analysis in joint activities

• Organisational
• Collective
• Individual

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Focus of the study

• Three levels of analysis in joint activities

• Organisational
• Collective
• Individual

• The unit of analysis is organisation
• (Managing Supply Chain, Quality Assurance)

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Focus of the study

• Three levels of analysis in joint activities

• Organisational
• Collective
• Individual

• The unit of analysis is Team of Humans
• (Work sociology, team working)

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Focus of the study

• Three levels of analysis in joint activities

• Organisational
• Collective
• Individual

• The unit of analysis is Human
• (Cognitive analysis, work psychology)

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Focus of the study

• Three levels of analysis in joint activities

• Organisational
• Collective
• Individual

Study of human behaviour and decision making
approaches when working together in planning and
scheduling context
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Joint Scheduling
Operations
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Analysing the Interaction

• What are the attributes and effects of this
  Interaction?

• Heterogeneous, cross-functional individuals from
  a variety of expertises that come together for a
  common purpose
• Autonomous stakeholders sharing information,
  resources, ideas and/or costs and risks in
  achieving the common purpose
• Coordination individual activities for joint
  benefit

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Analysing the Interaction

• There is a lack of commonly agreed theory
• When analysing human collective work, two crucial
  concepts are misunderstood
• Two distinctive factors are mainly used in
  distinguishing between collaboration and
  cooperation Division of labour and Coordination

COLLABORATION vs. COOPERATION
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Collaboration vs. Cooperation

• Division of Labour
• In cooperative work a task is subdivided between
  participants
• Participants work separately in cooperation
• Collaboration involves mutual engagement on
  activities
• Roschelle Teasley (1995), Dillenbourg et al
  (1996), Strijbos et al (2004)

• Collaboration may involve division of labour
• Cooperation and collaboration are used
  interchangeably
• Wood Gray (1991), Panitz (1997), Harvey
  Koubek (2000), Raposo et al (2001)

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Collaboration vs. Cooperation

• Coordination
• Coordination is a distinguishing factor of
  collaboration
• There is no coordination when work is cooperative
• Roschelle Teasley (1995), Dllenbourg et al
  (1996)

• Assembling partial results of divided tasks
  needs coordination
• Coordination is a strong part of cooperation
• Each co-operators behaviour needs to be
  predictable
• Mentzas (1993), Castelfranchi (1998), Malone et
  al (1999), Hoc (2001)

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Collaboration vs. Cooperation
Coordination
Division of Labour
?
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Collaboration vs. Cooperation
Division of labour is an attribute of cooperation
as well as collaboration

• Both cooperation and collaboration may contain
  Coordination as an element

COOPERATION versus COLLABORATION should
change to
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Collaborative State
Cooperation
Cooperative Work
Collaborative State

• Collaboration is a state of being has a number
  of components one component is cooperation

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Example
In the Street
I ask you for a pencil You give me a pencil
I ask Peter to proofread our paper
He asks me for a pencil I give him a pencil
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Collaborative Activity

• Collaboration

• Participants are engaged in an Activity towards
  common objective. They have their own goals,
  actions, knowledge, organisational rules and
  structure. However, they cooperate with each
  other to facilitate achieving common objective.

• Collaborative Model should include

Individual goals and group objective Individual
and common tasks Group roles
Group decision making process Cooperation
processes Domain and common knowledge Trust
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Collaborative Scheduling
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Relationship between individual and group domains
Group Goals
(Scheduling)
Goals
Goals
Cooperative Scheduling
Structure/Process
Tasks
Tasks
Group
Tasks


Additive
Resources
Roles

Resources
Disjunctive
Conjunctive
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Collaboration Hierarchy
(Kaptelinin, 1996)
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Cooperation

• Two persons are in a cooperative situation if
• Each one strives towards goals and can interfere
  with the other on goals, resources, procedures,
  etc.,
• Each one tries to manage the interference to
  facilitate the individual activities and/or the
  joint task when it exists.
• (Hoc, 2001)

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Classification of Cooperative Processes

• Based on interference management and facilitation
• Levels (Hoc, 2001)
• Action
• Plan
• Meta

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Classification of Cooperative Processes

• Based on interference management and facilitation
• Levels
• Action
• Operational processes directly related to goal
  during performance, local interference management
• Plan
• Meta

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Classification of Cooperative Processes

• Based on interference management and facilitation
• Levels
• Action
• Plan
• Cooperative processes at a higher abstraction
  level, updating a common representation of the
  current problem space
• Meta

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Classification of Cooperative Processes

• Based on interference management and facilitation
• Levels
• Action
• Plan
• Meta
• General data useful to the cooperative processes
  at the two lower levels, compatible
  representation, models of each other, etc

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Shared Competencies

• Common Frame Of Reference (COFOR)
• (Hoc, 2001)
• action, plan, and meta-level, each comprises a
  different abstraction level of problem
  representation
• from the most operational to the most abstract
• Schedules, organisational information, resources,
  activities, goals, etc should be represented in
  appropriate level to be useful to the team
  members.

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Project Scheduling and Planning

• Manufacturer (Mfg) 500000 vehicle per year, an
  extension agreement with the technology supplier
  for providing new equipment and technology
• Technology Supplier (TS) one of the leading
  companies in the world, responsible for exporting
  technology for new styles of vehicles and
  production lines
• General Contractor (GC) the main contractor for
  detailed design, installation, set up and
  maintenance.
• A five-year contract between Mfg and TS for the
  whole agreement, which is in turn divided into
  specific projects such as new robotic
  body-in-white assembly line, paint shop, press
  and die shops, trim lines.

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Planning and Scheduling Structure

• Executive Committee responsible for strategic,
  decisions (e.g., new product, prices, new
  contracts) is constitutes of high-level CEOs
• Management Committee responsible for specified
  projects (e.g., approval of Master Plan, problem
  solving in novel cases) comprises Mfg, GC and TS
  senior managers and vice deputies
• Management Task Force responsible for
  decision-making in projects (e.g., preparing
  Master Plan, projects progress reports)
  includes project managers in Mfg, GC and TS
• Technical Task Force responsible for
  decision-making related to executive teams in
  projects (e.g., progress reports, defining and
  pursuing Action Plans) includes executive
  stakeholders from Mfg, Ts, GC and any other major
  contractors
• Suppliers Executive Teams responsible for
  decision making in details of projects based on
  Sub Plans includes suppliers representatives.

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Level of Study

• Executive Committee
• Management Committee
• Management Task Force
• Technical Task Force responsible for
  decision-making related to executive teams in
  projects (e.g., progress reports, defining and
  pursuing Action Plans) includes executive
  stakeholders from Mfg, Ts, GC and any other major
  contractors
• (GC is one of the Task Forces)
• Suppliers Executive Teams

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Collaborative Activity

• Activity GC profit making
• Objective best scheduling practice for GC
• Organisational structure, procedures, rules, duty
  statements
• Management, policies, instructions

GC Scheduler

• Activity Project success
• Objective best collaborative scheduling for the
  coalition
• Project OBS, procedures, rules, duty statements
• Project management, standards, instructions
• 54 project managers
• 139 subcontractors

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Schedulers Cooperation
Action
Plan
Meta
(interference creation) Conveyor scheduler I
need to change the finishing date of the
production of lineshaft conveyors .
(interference detection) GC scheduler this
sixth activity in your Gantt chart overlaps with
the tryout stage
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Schedulers Cooperation
Action
Plan
Meta
(interference resolution) Conveyor scheduler
Ok, so I will arrange an extra shift for two
weeks so we can meet the due date .
(interference anticipation) GC scheduler in
the report you have sent me it is stated that you
have revised the gravity conveyors schedule. I
expect that you will ask me to change the
deadline for the rollers conveyors as well
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Schedulers Cooperation
Action
Plan
Meta
(resource updating) GC and press-contractor
schedulers are working together to elaborate a
plan for production of the press line of new
passenger car. During this work, press scheduler
informs GC that by launching a new workshop, they
have increased their lathing capacity by 20
percent. This might not be related to the
current action however, it might be useful for
the future work settings.
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Schedulers Cooperation
Action
Plan
Meta
(common representation of the problem
space) JFCs scheduler responsible for
manufacturing jig and fixture of coating lines
for cylinder heads ask for 21 days delay as a
part of the solution for their problem. GCs
scheduler identifies that this solution may cause
a new problem with the sub plan of another
supplier who is responsible for designing
turntables. Then JFCs scheduler must reconsider
the decision. Thus, it is no longer a two-company
problem but three companies are involved.
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Schedulers Cooperation
Action
Plan
Meta
(compatible format) During the manufacturing a
special punching machine, GC and special-machine
schedulers realise that to better performance,
Gantt chart of the project and WBS should be
supported with the detailed specification and
time limitation of the ultimate user of the
machine (i.e., Mfg). This shared information, is
neither used for the real-time actions of
producing parts of the punching machine nor for
the whole project. It will be used in the future
work.
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Levels of Collaboration

• Interaction can be focused at

Conditions Project manager asks for a change in
delivery time of paint-shop elevator chains to be
ready two weeks earlier. The GCs scheduler
accepts it. However, he uses a subcontractor for
with a lower quality, B-rating, which is not
recommended by the projects standard
policy. Goals In above-mentioned case, GCs
scheduler reminds manager I can make them two
weeks earlier. But, I need to use a B-rated
subcontractor. Are you sure you want it? I expect
you are suggesting this time because you want it
to be installed before piping fixtures. If this
is the case, you do not need to worry. These
chains can be installed after that. Objective
In the above-mentioned case, they might decide
which of the factors cost, quality or time, are
predominantly critical in the project and/or they
might change it, there might be other purposes
such as Entrepreneurship.
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Cooperation in Collaborative Scenarios

From executive to long-term information
From low-level to high-level collaboration
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Joint Scheduling
Operations
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Back to the Interaction

• Is of the form of Collaborative
• Includes Cooperative processes
• Is affected by other components of Collaborative
  state

Interaction

• Design of computer supports, CSCW
• Training
• Organisational settings
• Knowledge management Cultural-Historical Context

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• Please advise

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Structure of Cooperation

• Affects quality of performance
• Millot and Lemoine (1998) apply a two-dimensional
  structure
• Vertical
• Hierarchical relationship of authority between
  parties
• Each party must cooperate with the other party at
  the lower level to manage interferences and also
  ensure that the second party can facilitate its
  goal
• Horizontal
• Heterarchical relationship
• While managing their individual tasks, each
  manages interferences between their joint tasks.

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Form of Cooperation

• Schmidt (1991)
• Augmentative
• All parties have similar domain-knowledge
  expertise
• Cooperate with each other to solve workload
  problems
• Group task is shared into similar subtasks (e.g.
  scheduling by humans using similar contextual
  information at comparable levels of
  organisational responsibility)
• Debative
• Parties with similar expertise cooperate on a
  unique task by comparing their results to improve
  performance quality
• (e.g. human schedulers working on a common
  schedule but applying different domain expertise
  and contextual information)
• Integrative
• participants have different domain knowledge
• They cooperate on different (and complementary)
  subtasks of a joint task (e.g. human schedulers
  at different levels of organisational
  responsibility using similar contextual
  information and looking at the problem from
  different abstraction levels).

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Group Decision Process

• Three phases in collaborative Scheduling
  (Miller,1988)
• Conceptualisation
• Participating organisations first conceive in
  common which activities are to be scheduled and
  the boundaries of the problem
• Functions at a high level of abstraction and
  macro-level processes
• Visualisation
• Concepts in the first phase are visualised by
  applying documented characteristics
• Sketching schedules, documenting contextual and
  group knowledge and communicating schedules to
  manufacturing personnel are examples
• Transference of scheduling orders between
  different levels of the work organisation
• Realisation
• Formation of physical products
• Finalising schedules, allocating resources, and
  timing
• Cooperative activities are mainly at the same
  level of work organisation.