The Organisation of External Resources through Guest Engineers

This paper describes exploratory research which investigates the scope, nature, role and activities of guest engineers. Guest engineers are an inter-firm organisational mechanism which is usually deployed as a compromise between the total outsourcing of design on the one hand, and the total in-house development of products on the other. A classification of guest engineers is presented based on their permanent (or semi-permanent) location and the main focus of their engineering expertise. Four types of guest engineer are identified - the pure form of which is termed the guest design engineer (GDE). Suppliers of GDEs, together with their hosts, are examined to identify their most significant activities and tasks. These are divided into clusters of similar activities which are assessed according to their relative importance and relative performance. Differences are found between suppliers' and customers' perceptions of both the importance and performance of each of these cluster activities. In addition, three sets of significant role design decisions are identified: the scheduling of GDEs; the nature of the required skills; and the direct activities of GDEs during the development process itself.