When the phrase “social network” comes to mind, people generally think about Facebook or Twitter. Volumes of academic studies have been written on this relatively new phenomenon.

But engineers who design such complex products as automobiles and airplanes have been operating within their own social networks—or specific patterns of communication—for a long time.

As with most patterns of communication, gaps are bound to occur. A recent study undertaken by operations expert Wallace Hopp and two colleagues describes such gaps in social networks as “coordination deficits.” Such deficits can be costly if not corrected.

“Based on what we hear from managers in the industry, about 60 percent of their quality problems are manufacturing-based and 40 percent are design-based,” says Hopp, the Herrick Professor of manufacturing at Ross. “We found that roughly 20 percent of those design problems can be traced to inadequate communication. This means that coordination problems are responsible for as many errors as individual mistakes by engineers. That’s very powerful information."

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