Coupling Structural Complexity Management and System Dynamics to represent the dynamic behavior of product development processes

Abstract

Product development processes exhibit increasing dynamic behavior, as for instance time to market needs to be decreased while the number of variants as well as employee turnover increases. During the time, various modeling tools have been developed for the management of product development processes. But these tools are usually not able to cope with their dynamic behavior. On the other hand, various approaches exist to illustrate the dynamic behavior such as the System Dynamics methodology. Both approaches are independent and offer various benefits, but the link how dynamic aspects influence the underlying structure and thereby increase the complexity of product development processes on a detailed level is still object to research. Therefore, we suggest the coupling of the Structural Complexity Management (StCM) methodology with the System Dynamics methodology. This offers the possibility to relate, simulate and manage dynamic influences on product development processes on a structural level. This would enable an optimization of product development process towards a more robust and reliable dynamic behavior. Within this paper, as a first step, the transformation method from multiple domain matrices (MDM) to System Dynamics models is described. Rework cycles are identified as main elements for the transformation. Furthermore, a qualitative System Dynamics model of an e-bike sharing system development process, derived from MDMs, is presented. With this coupling, dynamic influencing factors can be related to their result on the structure of the product development process. This would allow for an early projection of the performance of the development system over time, based on its structure.