Collaborative Research: Observing, Analyzing, and Modeling Design-Team Problem-Decompositions in Facility Design

工程师们以团队合作的方式解决复杂的系统设计问题，如确定工厂或医疗设施的布局。许多问题太复杂，无法一下子解决，因此工程师们将问题分成一组子问题，并解决较小的子问题。因为这种分解策略影响设施设计的整体质量，所以团队使用好的分解策略是很重要的。该奖项支持基础研究，以了解工程师团队如何解决设施设计问题，以及他们的策略如何影响他们设计的设施的性能。这项研究将研究工程师团队在解决工厂重新设计问题和医疗设施设计问题时的情况。拟设计的医疗设施是配药点，用于在公共卫生紧急情况下向公众配药。这项研究的结果将包括配药点和其他类型设施的设计指南。结果将在学术出版物和设施设计短期课程中传播，从而为制造企业提供更好的分配点、更具生产力的工厂和经济效益。设施设计问题是一类重要的系统设计问题。研究团队将确定设计团队用来解决设施设计问题的推理过程和问题分解，并生成关于哪些分解导致更好解决方案的假设。这反过来将使未来能够研究如何设计更好的设计过程。在一系列实地研究中，研究团队将观察人类设计师团队分解和解决设施设计问题的过程。利用定性数据分析，研究人员将确定他们的分解策略。这涉及在相关培训课程期间对解决设施设计问题的两个不同实例的专业人员进行经验性观察：公共卫生专业人员团队设计大规模抗生素分配设施，以及专业工程师团队重新设计制造设施。这些结果将描述工程师团队如何在现实的设施设计环境中分解设计问题，从而丰富了设施设计特别是系统设计的设计理论知识基础。

Engineers work in teams to solve complex system design problems like determining the layout of a factory or medical facility. Many problems are too complex to be solved all at once, so that engineers separate the problem into a set of subproblems and solve the smaller subproblems. Because this decomposition strategy affects the overall quality of the facility design, it is important that the teams use good decomposition strategies. This award supports fundamental research to gain understanding of how teams of engineers solve facility design problems and how their strategies affect the performance of the facilities they design. The research will study teams of engineers as they solve factory redesign problems and medical facility design problems. The medical facilities to be designed are points of dispensing, which are designed for dispensing medication to the public in a public health emergency. The results from this research will include guidelines for designing points of dispensing and other types of facilities. The results will be disseminated in scholarly publications and through short courses on facility design, enabling better points of dispensing, more productive factories, and economic benefits to manufacturing firms. Facility design problems are an important class of system design problems. The research team will identify the reasoning processes and problem decompositions used by design teams to solve facility design problems and generate hypotheses about which decompositions lead to better solutions. This in turn will enable future research on how to design better design processes. In a series of field studies, the research team will observe teams of human designers as they decompose and solve facility design problems. Using qualitative data analysis, the researchers will identify their decomposition strategies. This involves empirical observation of professionals solving two distinct instances of facility design problems during relevant training courses: teams of public health professionals designing a mass antibiotic distribution facility and teams of professional engineers redesigning a manufacturing facility. The results will describe how teams of engineers decompose design problems in realistic facility design settings, enriching the knowledge base of design theory for facility design in particular and system design more generally.