An Approach to Measuring Ship Design Complexity

Abstract

Understanding different aspects of complexity and measuring them properly are important steps of handling ship design complexity effectively. The main objective of this article is to develop a practical and comprehensive method to measure ship design complexity. In engineering design, complexity is measured today by different indexes and methods. This paper initially explores the applicability of such measures in a ship design context supported by a review of different relevant user-cases. However, it is acknowledged that most of these measurement methods focus on product-related complexity aspects and rarely address or quantify complexities generated by the design process, the organisation of the firm, or the market situation. Therefore, this paper introduces a new and comprehensive model to measure ship design complexity including all these aspects. The model quantifies ship design complexity by means of the following nine different descriptive factors: directional, spatial, decision-making, structural, behavioral, contextual, perceptual, temporal, and technological complexity.