Framework for Integrating Offshore Design Offices

The goal of this Master’s thesis was to find an integration framework and process between Cargotec Tampere’s main design office and locally situated design offices. The problem had been that there was no defined process to integrate the local small offices with the main global office at Tampere. Without a defined process and tools it is difficult to achieve good efficiency from the start.

The thesis was made with qualitative constructive research methods. The three main research processes were literature review, interviews and two case studies inside Cargotec. For the literature review, three research areas were studied: global engineering networks, virtual teams and supplier integration. From those three areas a synthesis was developed, called the combined theoretical model for design office integration. The interviews covered approximately 15 different people. From the interviews the current situation of integration and the requirements for the practical framework were synthesized. The two case studies on Cargotec’s design office in China and a daughter company, MacGregor, are based on interviews with managers, whose job it was to manage and develop offshored design offices. They are presented as individual evidence on the difficulties and lessons learned.

When researching and interviewing employees, it became clear that there were many problems with achieving good integration at Cargotec. First, there had to be a clear sense of what kind of capabilities the new office had. Second, what materials and training should Cargotec give to the new office to match the main office’s capabilities? To improve the situation, an integration framework and three tools were created. The framework and tools are derived from the combined theoretical model. The framework consists of three phases: Survey, Sharing and Verification. The survey phase defines the needs for a new design office, maps and evaluates the capabilities of the prospective design office, and evaluates the offshoring risks. For this, the phase two tools, called current state analysis and risk assessment, were developed. The sharing phase defines and shares all the materials and other resources that the host design office would need to get to the same level with the main design office regarding software, network, skills, material and product knowledge. For this phase, an Excel-tool called the integration package was developed. The last phase, verification, is meant to verify the results of the sharing phase by giving the new design office a pilot task, which tests the new office’s systems, knowledge and communication. The testing of the framework and its tools showed that they were mature enough to be used at Cargotec. /Kir10
vesala.pdf (application/pdf Object)