Using student conative behaviors and technical skills to form effective project teams

Throughout much of the past century, manufacturing efficiencies were gained by constructing systems from independently designed and optimized tasks. Theories and practice have extolled the virtues of team-based practices that rely on human flexibility and empowerment to improve system performance. The formation of teams requires the consideration of innate tendencies and interpersonal skills as well as technical skills. In this paper, we discuss an experiment that was run for developing effective student teams. We used the Kolbe Index to help ensure that student conative tendencies are considered along with technical skills. We then developed and solved mathematical programming models to form effective teams. The method can easily be moved to an industrial setting.