Bringing logistics into the laboratory: developing a team-based logistics task

Air Force Journal of Logistics,  Winter, 2007  by Joseph B. Lyons,  Charlene Stokes,  Mark Palumbo,  Edward Boyle,  Jason Seyba,   Ames David

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Background

Organizations are facing increasing demands that accompany the ubiquitous change characteristic of contemporary work domains. (l,2) To accommodate some of these changes, organizations implement work teams. (3,4,5) Traditionally, the military has relied on teams of people to accomplish their missions. This is particularly evident within the realm of logistics. Military logistics involves ensuring that the right material elements of combat capability are delivered together at the proper location and time while in a configuration that is beneficial to the supported commander. (6) United States Air Force logistics utilizes many distributed teams throughout the enterprise with the goal of transitioning from large, fixed organizational units to smaller, more agile units. (7, 8) Logistics operations are increasingly complex as information exchanges are conducted across distributed information nodes at demanding operation tempo. (9, 10) This is reflected in contemporary military logistics doctrine (such as sense and respond logistics, distributed adaptive logistics, and focused logistics) which emphasizes network-centric operations and adaptability as key determinants of logistics success in military operations. (11)

The increased complexity and turbulent environments in which logistics teams are required to operate introduce novel requirements for team effectiveness. Past researchers have conceptualized team types along a continuum from simple to complex as determined by the performance contexts in which the team is required to operate. (12) Clearly, the logistics teams operating in today's warfare environment exist at the complex end of the continuum. Such teams often perform highly structured but dynamic tasks, share common goals, have specialized task requirements and distributed expertise, and have differentiated roles but coordinated patterns of interdependencies dictated by task requirements. (13) A key determinate of effectiveness in such teams is the ability of team members to integrate their individual efforts and balance their workflow interdependencies to changing situational demands. Moreover, adaptability as a performance capability of teams is critical to interdependent work teams and long-term team effectiveness. (14)

As with the overall logistics domain, the teams operating in the warfare environment are best viewed as an adaptive network where individual roles (nodes) and the links between them can be reconfigured or adapted to meet changing task demands. To achieve effective team performance, team members must develop appropriate knowledge and skills in order to comprehend the patterns of role exchange and the relation of differing network patterns to changing task demands. (15) In order to examine such performance and determine if the appropriate knowledge and skills are being developed, we must adopt a process-oriented, developmental perspective and assess team performance under changing task demands.

Information managers, or knowledge workers, in logistic readiness centers dedicate many hours to collecting information worldwide; they analyze that information, then they redistribute the combined knowledge necessary for military planners to make informed decisions. This places human operators at the heart of logistics networks. However, technology solutions and sophisticated mathematical algorithms tend to be the focus of logistics research. (16, 17) The success of these knowledge workers is dependent on distributed teams working collaboratively on a shared information space. Lessons learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom emphasize the importance of information exchange between logistics operators. (18) Even where information is gathered, analyzed, and then acted upon at a base-wide scale, distributed teams are key to the success of the mission. Examples of base-size teams include the coordination of aircraft maintenance activities, sortie generation and logistics planning, and generalized aerial port operations. Effective collaboration is a key facilitator amongst these distributed logistics teams.

Collaboration in a general sense refers to the cooperative exchange of information that may result in a novel product or idea. (19) Modern day logistics operations often involve interactions among coalition forces in joint operations, thus placing greater reliance on effective collaboration. One way that researchers can gain a better understanding of the factors that influence team collaboration and performance is to design experimental scenarios that require teams to work together on tasks requiring coordination, planning, and problem solving. Laboratory environments are increasingly being used to examine team performance. (20) However, the development of team-based laboratory scenarios is limited by potentially extracting the physical fidelity that facilitates generalization from the research scenario to the applied setting. Modern simulations, albeit at a high cost, can replicate many of the intricate details of operational settings and are often used in aviation domains. Unfortunately, financial concerns will preclude the development of many of these high-fidelity simulations. In contrast, the psychological (21) or task-related (synthetic) fidelity (22) of a laboratory scenario may provide a very viable alternative. Even simulations of very low physical fidelity can be useful in predicting performance when they are task relevant. (23) Researchers at the Cognitive Engineering Research on Team Tasks Laboratory (24, 25) epitomize the development of team-based laboratory tasks. Their scenarios and tasks replicate the behaviors and skills represented in the real world domain. (26) Similarly, the present research involves a scenario with low physical fidelity yet high psychological and task-related fidelity.