Abstract
Complexity (entirety of all characteristics): Nowadays there is hardly another word spoken with more awe in connection with new products than this one.
I have great respect for his ability to oversimplify things. Where else do you find this these days? Im drowning in complexity around here.
Hilmar Kopper, chairman of the executive board of the Deutsche Bank, about Jürgen Schrempp, group chief executive of DaimlerChrysler AG.
People who can handle complexity are greatly respected by everyone as it is shown in the above quotation. These people seem to be able to control something, what to many others appears almost insolvable: To summarize characteristics and correlations to the essential and then to draw conclusions from this reduced and condensed information.
If you transfer this insight to the product development of complex products it becomes clear that only the essential characteristics of the entirety have to be considered. This requires having the answer to the question which characteristics are essential for decision making in product development, apart from a practical approach for condensing information. As it is shown thereby, characteristics in dependency of the aggregation level of a product must be determined differently.
An approach, based on probability, using the example of a procedure for cost determination in the conception phase of innovative products (Front Load Costing), will be introduced. It supports, methodically and mathematically, the reduction to the essential (oversimplification) with the use of incomplete information.
The primary goal is to quantify the values and risks in decision bases and to represent the foundation of durable decisions comprehensibly. Here, however, it is made certain that the user does not lose sight of the actual problem, which can happen during approaches that are too mathematically oriented.
Ever since the mathematicians set upon the theory of relativity I have problems understanding it myself.
Albert Einstein, inventor of the theory of relativity