Toward the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory

The term " 24-Hour Knowledge Factory " connotes a globally distributed work environment in which members of the global team work on a project around the clock; each member of the team works the normal workday hours that pertain to his or her time zone. At the end of such a workday, a fellow team member located in a different time zone continues the same task. This creates the shift-style workforce that was originally conceived in the manufacturing sector. A globally distributed 24-hour call center is the simplest manifestation of this paradigm. The true example of the 24-hour factory paradigm discussed in this paper involves groups working together to accomplish a given set of deliverables, such as a software project, and transcending conventional spatial and temporal boundaries. INTRODUCTION " The Sun never sets on the British Empire, " was a notion emphasized during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to highlight that the British Empire was far-flung, and that the sun was always visible from some part of this vast empire. While the British Empire has gradually disintegrated, we can now coin an equivalent notion: " The Sun never sets on the 24-hour Knowledge Factory! " The notion of the 24-hour Knowledge Factory can be traced back to the industrial revolution. Since the installed equipment was scarce and costly, the employees were scheduled to work in shifts of 8 hours in order to use the manufacturing facilities on a round-the-clock basis. With the advent of electronic computers and diminishing costs for telecommunications, one developed the notion of 24-hour Call Centers. Depending on the time of the call, it is automatically directed to a call center that is active at that time. Using a cluster of 3 to 4 call centers located in time zones 6-8 hours apart from the time zone of the neighboring call center, one can ensure that all employees of these geographically distributed call centers are working