Semantic analysis of verbal communication in cross-functional design team: a study of driver seat design in an automotive company

The automotive industry has become highly networked to meet the challenging market demands. This requires improved communication in the cross-functional development team. CATER is a design philosophy that showcases the best practice of networked business and it addresses the communication in the cross-functional design team. This article describes a method based on latent semantic analysis (LSA) for measuring the semantic coherence between team members with different backgrounds in a cross-functional design team in an automotive company. The implication of this research and future work suggest a computational tool for detecting and diagnosing the non-functioning design teams.