Manufacturing Engineer Elotouch Systems

†Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. KEY WORDS design for manufacturing; cost of complexity; product development. While mechanical systems are not becoming increasing complex, Design for Manufacturing and Assembly guidelines promote a reduction in part count. This often results in an increase in the complexity of the remaining components, which can conflict with other product development constraints. This paper does not characterize complexity, but rather discusses the potential impact which increased component complexity has on design and manufacturing of commercial products. A probabilistic approach is taken to provide insight into the impact of complexity: increasing complexity reduces the probability that product development will be successful at a fixed level of investment. As such, additional investment is often required to satisfy design, manufacturing, and customer requirements. Afterwards, the paper discusses several alternative strategies for minimizing the negative impact of increasing product complexity