A Method for Visualizing the Structural Complexity of Organizational Architectures

<p>To achieve a high level of performance and efficiency, contemporary aerospace systems must become increasingly complex. While complexity management traditionally focuses on a product’s components and their interconnectedness, organizational representation in complexity analysis is just as essential. This thesis addresses this organizational aspect of complexity through an Organizational Complexity Metric (OCM) to aid complexity management. The OCM augments Sinha’s structural complexity metric for product architectures into a metric that can be applied to organizations. Utilizing nested numerical design structure matrices (DSMs), a compact visual representation of organizational complexity was developed. Within the nested numerical DSM are existing organizational datasets used to quantify the complexity of both organizational system components and their interfaces. The OCM was applied to a hypothetical system example, as well as an existing aerospace organizational architecture. Through the development of the OCM, this thesis assumed that each dataset was collected in a statistically sufficient manner and has a reasonable correlation to system complexity. This thesis recognizes the lack of complete human representation and aims to provide a platform for expansion. Before a true organizational complexity metric can be applied to real systems, additional human considerations should be considered. These limitations differ from organization to organization and should be taken into consideration before implementation into a working system. The visualization of organizational complexity uses a color gradient to show the relative complexity density of different parts of the organization.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

MS in Aerospace Engineering

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Aerospace Engineering

Year dc:date.available

2021

Author dc:creator

• King, Jacob Michael B

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dianne Deturris
• Aerospace Engineering
• College of Engineering

• Structural Complexity
• Design Structure Matrix
• Organizational Metric
• Systems Engineering
• Systems Engineering and Multidisciplinary Design Optimization

Identifier

10.15368/theses.2021.9

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.calpoly.edu:theses-3789