DEVELOPMENT OF THE CRITERION AND THE METHOD OF ESTIMATION OF THE COMPLEXITY OF THE STRUCTURE OF TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

In the process of designing, manufacturing and operating complex technological systems, it is necessary to have criteria and methods for assessing the perfection of their structure. A method for assessing the complexity of the structure of technological systems by the criterion that is a complex quantity and takes into account the number of system elements, connections between elements, connections between elements and the external environment, and the hierarchical level of elements in the system is developed. The choice of the criterion was made under the following assumptions: the element of the system has one «input» and one «output», through which its interaction with other elements of the system and the external environment occurs; the state of the system element is uniquely determined by the state of its «input». The complexity of the structure of the unit element is unity; the complexity of the structure of the system consisting of an infinite number of elements is equal to infinity. The complexity of the system structure is determined by the number of system elements, the number of connections between them and the external environment, and also the hierarchical level of the element in the system. The method for assessing the complexity of the structure of technological systems is sufficiently accurate, intuitively acceptable and suitable for practical research. Application of the developed method in practice allows solving the problem of objective analysis of the structure of complex technological systems and giving them a quantitative assessment. An example of using the method for analyzing the structure of technological equipment systems of sintering plants of the Krivoy Rog iron ore basin (Ukraine) is give