Transfer of Crew Ressource Management Training Into Product Design

Product design is a complex reality domain with changing requirements on the engineer. Design processes are getting more and more complex mixtures of cooperation within and between different disciplines. The number and significance of projects is rising and thus teamwork with colleagues, superiors, other departments or even other companies increases and so does the importance of the designer’s social skills. This development is not only valid in product design, but also in other complex reality domains. Due to increased demands on employees in the domain of aviation and due to problems related to communication and cooperation within the crews, airlines developed a program what was called Crew Resource Management (CRM) to train their airplane crews. CRM is focusing on non-technical skills such as communication, decision-making, stress and conflict management. These non-technical skills were formulated specifically for tasks and work in airplane crews. Behavioral Markers have been developed to assess the impact of the training in practice and in research. Behavioral Markers are observable, non-technical behaviors that contribute to superior or substandard performance. Other complex reality domains, such as medicine, adopted and slightly modified these systems. These Behavioral Marker concepts allow not only a better rating of performance, but also a better focus on relevant aspects in teamwork. This paper presents four concepts of Crew Resource Management. An approach to transfer the Behavioral Marker concept into product design and accordingly develop a non-technical skills training for product design is formulated. Advantages and limitations of such a training concept are discussed.