Abstract This paper discusses the complexity of technical systems resulted from engineering design. We defined the “overall difficulty” of such a system as consisting of “inborn complication” due to customer needs and external constraints as well as “acquired complexity” associated with uncertainty in satisfying the functional requirements caused by design decisions. An ideal design should lead to the least difficult technical system by minimizing inborn complication and eliminating acquired complexity. To achieve this design ideality, strategies of using the Axiomatic Design theory and the Design-Centric Complexity theory are introduced to guide the creation and improvement of complex time-independent and time-dependent technical systems.
[1]
Marcia J. Bates,et al.
Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences
,
2009
.
[2]
Herbert A. Simon,et al.
The Sciences of the Artificial
,
1970
.
[3]
Suh Nam-pyo,et al.
Complexity: Theory and Applications
,
2005
.
[4]
M. Mitchell Waldrop,et al.
Complexity : the emerging science and the edge of order and chaos
,
1992
.
[5]
Francis Heylighen,et al.
Complexity and Self-organization
,
2008
.
[6]
W. Weaver.
Science and complexity.
,
1948,
American scientist.
[7]
T. C. Helvey.
The age of information : an interdisciplinary survey of cybernetics
,
1971
.
[8]
N. Suh.
Complexity in Engineering
,
2005
.