Boundary instances insheterogeneous engineering teams Trouble management in the dram manufacturing process

High-technology production requires both increasing specialization in expert teams, and increasing cross-functional cooperation across team boundaries. These objectives can be in conflict. This chapter examines the social processes by which expert teams cooperate, despite the heterogeneous views and opinions arising from their specializations. The focus is on the dynamics of cooperation among expert teams of engineers responsible for trouble management in production of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), a class of integrated circuit semiconductor devices. Trouble management is the handling of routine problems that defy simple classification and solution due to their origins at the margins of scientific and engineering knowledge. Three DRAM engineering teams are studied: design, process, and process integration. The findings suggest that the crucial challenge in achieving cooperation among these teams rests not in strategies for collecting and classifying relevant problem/solution information. Rather, it is in the management of a political process of “problematization” that assigns “problem spaces” to “solution spaces” corresponding to the biases of each team. This process is triggered by the rise of “boundary instances” of trouble that require action across team boundaries. Resolution depends on successful use of “boundary objects” to articulate the work of problem solving among the teams.