Complex Design Networks: Structure and Dynamics

TL;DR

This paper explores how complex network science can explain failures and dynamics in large-scale engineering systems, emphasizing the importance of network structure in understanding design errors, robustness, and resource allocation.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive review of complex design networks, linking their topological features to system dynamics and proposing a framework for a science of design.

Findings

Key topological features influence error propagation and robustness.

Modeling design systems as complex networks reveals insights into failure mechanisms.

Structural analysis can guide resource allocation and improve resilience.

Abstract

Why was the $6 billion FAA air traffic control project scrapped? How could the 1977 New York City blackout occur? Why do large scale engineering systems or technology projects fail? How do engineering changes and errors propagate, and how is that related to epidemics and earthquakes? In this paper we demonstrate how the rapidly expanding science of complex design networks could provide answers to these intriguing questions. We review key concepts, focusing on non-trivial topological features that often occur in real-world large-scale product design and development networks; and the remarkable interplay between these structural features and the dynamics of design rework and errors, network robustness and resilience, and design leverage via effective resource allocation. We anticipate that the empirical and theoretical insights gained by modeling real-world large-scale product design and development systems as self-organizing complex networks will turn out to be the standard framework of a genuine science of design.