Originally Posted by
Often1
...There is a lot of travel which can be eliminated and life goes on just fine.
many companies have been singing this tune since the earliest days of video conferencing
I was part of a Boeing team that implemented a three-station VTC link to support B-1B radar system flight tests in the 1983 timeframe; we put equipment in dedicated conference rooms at the program office in Seattle and the radar supplier facility at BWI (Westinghouse, now Northrop Grumman), and worked with the Air Force Flight Test Center (Edwards AFB) to upgrade the equipment in one of the test team facilities near the flightline (Westinghouse had actually invested in a system to support the F-16 program, and the B-1B radar was based on the one in the F-16) ... I was part of the on-site flight test support team at Westinghouse as they were configuring a BAC 1-11 as a flying testbed, and then spent three years at Edwards providing systems engineering support to both flight test and production checkout
by the time I left the program in mid 1987, Boeing program management was declaring the VTC a major success in terms of cost control, and the USAF had installed a compatible room at the B-1B program office at Wright-Patterson AFB
Originally Posted by
Often1
... more efficiency from the employee and the end product does not suffer. ...
that's the bean-counters' selling phrase, and it doesn't take any intangible costs into account ... as many previous posters have stated, the psychological and emotional connections from face-to-face interactions are often a very necessary part of maintaining productivity
more importantly, there's a massive difference between "efficiency" and "effectiveness" ... the former basically gets the tasks done right, the latter gets the right tasks done