Work sampling for the production development: A case study of a supplier in European automotive industry

Effective development of production processes within modern engineering projects requires project management to take into consideration the sociotechnical project aspects, such as insights into individual and team work, including how much time team members spend on different activities, how they communicate, within what context and in what manner. The paper reports on a self-reporting work sampling approach developed and tailored for the production development and the application of the approach in an automotive industry supplier company. A case study was conducted in a Tier 1 development and manufacturing supplier for the automotive industry in EU. Although the approach requires a significant amount of preparation efforts to configure the tools and reduce participants self-reporting bias, it is less intrusive during data collection as it does not require the presence of researchers. Results provide insights into team members' work type engagement and how their activity was coupled with the context, the manner and the nature of information transaction utilized. Project managers can use these insights to tailor workloads and modify team composition to improve collaboration, coordination and information exchange.