Implementation of the virtual teamworking concept into the simulation project life-cycle.

Simulation is a powerful tool that allows producing the best solution for a variety of design and operational issues in manufacturing systems. It provides the ability to assess the impact of various solutions without interfering with the real system. Applying simulation in the decision making process can significantly decrease the cost and risk of implementing a new solution, and at the same time speed up the process of analysing and finding the optimum solution. However, simulation projects usually are complex, and involve a number of people in the model's developing process. The simulation team is usually formed with specific roles for team members to play, such as project leader, model builder, data provider, customer, consultant, etc. However, the globalisation of business operations means that individuals involved in a large multi-site simulation project may be physically dispersed across the organisation and the world. For example, simulation experts may be based in one location and their service may be offered to business units scatted across the globe. This makes more difficult to collocate all project participants in one place at the same time and consumes extra effort, time and cost. Applying a virtual team methodology, supported by the modern Internet-based communication technologies, can overcome the described problems - reduce cost and project time in a large multi-site simulation study. This research investigates the implication of employing the virtual team concept to the simulation team, collaboration process and quality of project output. The analysis introduces the framework for creating the virtual simulation team and two step methodology with short, medium and long recommendations proposed. Then the developed methodology is validated by empirical experiment and simulation experiment. However, in order to carry on the real life experiment a WWW-based application to support the virtual simulation team was developed, and applied in the collaboration process. The experiments positively validated the methodology and provided data to check and optimise the developed application. The study is concluded by discussion of the final research results and future work.