Modelling teams and workgroups in manufacturing

One of the major features of Japanese manufacturing techniques is the extensive use of teams, i.e., workers who as a group work together to produce sub-assemblies or finished products, or, alternatively, work together to accomplish a project. Many naive promoters of the team concept assume that the team members work together on the same tasks and activities and somehow accomplish them faster and better. However, observation of actual teams indicates that, unless a team member is new and quite inexperienced, teams split the required task or activities up so that each member has a unique task and most of the time members work independently. This paper develops models that try to describe the features of division of labour in teams and the way in which differences in capability between different team members impact performance. The models suggest that the advantage of teams probably lies primarily in the structure that enables faster/better workers to help out others.