COMPLEXITY AS INFORMATION CONTENT AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR SYSTEMS DESIGN
DS 77: Proceedings of the DESIGN 2014 13th International Design Conference
Year: 2014
Editor: Marjanovic Dorian, Storga Mario, Pavkovic Neven, Bojcetic Nenad
Author: Colombo, E.F.; Cascini, G.
Series: DESIGN
Section: SYSTEMS ENGINEERING AND DESIGN
Page(s): 1249-1260
Abstract
Even though Engineering literature concerning “Complexity” is huge, there is still much discussion about the meaning of this word. This paper attempts to provide an operational definition of Complexity in Engineering design and to explain its implications for the design process. To this end, the concept of technical holon is introduced from Soft system thinking and the effort required to deal with Complexity is highlighted through the notion of Complicatedness. The usefulness of the proposed concepts is shown thanks to the analysis of some design practices in the field of Systems Engineering.
Keywords: systems design, complexity, complicatedness