A grey measurement of product complexity

With the rapid development of science and technology, product complexity increases dramatically. Practically, product complexity not only affects the cycle time of its development, but also impacts production cost, quality, serviceability and customer satisfaction. Moreover, product complexity will even have a profound impact on manufacturing organization and management style of producer. It is, therefore, one of most important factors for a company to consider in its product development process. Theoretically, measurement of product complexity has had many problems needed to be overcome, since in perspective of product life cycle, a product is not only a complex system but a complex process. This paper provides a model in which product complexity is measured in terms of technology, size, organization, and environment. It uses a multi-level indicator system to present product complexity. A grey coefficient is provided to comprehensively evaluate the system complexity of a product, so that it can be used to optimize a product design and evaluate alternatives of product schemes. It can further be used to reveal relationship between product complexity with cost, quality, cycle time, and customer satisfaction.