A typical international engineering project to design, build, test, deliver, and install a system starts with a set of specifications written in French; a budget in Euros; a schedule that covers all the time zones and holidays of several different countries; subsystems designed, built, and tested at several countries around the world, integrated into a system designed, built, and tested in the United States; and deliverables that end up in Russia.

In just-in-time volume production side, an international engineering project can go like this. Designing, prototyping, and qualification of computer disk drive magnetic heads are accomplished in the United States. Wafers for the magnetic heads are also manufactured in the United States. Wafers are sent to Malaysia and manufactured into subassemblies. Subassemblies are sent from Malaysia to South Korea and built into assemblies. Final disk drive head assemblies are sent from South Korea to Japan to go into a customer s fully automated disk drive assembly.

In general, an international project team is formed in order to perform the needed engineering tasks, prepare the deliverables, and satisfy the customer. However, there are quite a number of challenges in managing an international engineering project that are not normally encountered in a domestic engineering project. These challenges can cover a wide range of technological, virtual team environment, traditional, economic, political, legal, and other factors.