Complexity is ever present in today’s modern products, processes, organizations, and markets. Complex engineered systems are often seen as obstacles in the design and development of successful products and services. The ability to manage complexity can provide a major competitive advantage by enhancing product functionality, generating intellectual property safeguards, and facilitating the creation of innovative products not otherwise possible. Over the years, approaches to complexity management have taken different forms. The Design Structure Matrix (DSM) is one method that has proven very valuable in designing and optimizing technical systems, complex organizations, densely networked processes and large market structures. Recent research has extended the DSM to Domain Mapping approaches (DMM to interaction with multi-domain systems. The International Design Structure Matrix Conference has, for many years, been the forum to exchange new developments, trends, and ideas to propel complexity management across various industries. Hosted by the Institute for Product Development (Technische Universität München) and the BMW Group in Munich, Germany, the 9th International DSM Conference brings together researchers, management and industrial practitioners to cover the breadth of today’s leading technologies and their industrial applications. During 16 to 18 October 2007, international experts gather to discuss advances in complexity management in an industrial context, to review the development of tools to manage complex architectures and to share new research ideas. Being at the pulse of DSM-based methodology, these proceedings represent a broad overview of the current state of the art on the application of Design Structure Matrices, Domain Mapping Matrices and Graph Theory in complexity management. It is targeted at interested readers across the wide spectrum of commercial industry as well as tool developers and researchers.     «

Complexity is ever present in today’s modern products, processes, organizations, and markets. Complex engineered systems are often seen as obstacles in the design and development of successful products and services. The ability to manage complexity can provide a major competitive advantage by enhancing product functionality, generating intellectual property safeguards, and facilitating the creation of innovative products not otherwise possible. Over the years, approaches to complexity management...     »