Complexity of Multi-Disciplinary Design

Modern products such as mechatronics machines are increasingly becoming multi-disciplinary. This phenomenon is amplified when considering a system composed of mechatronic elements. This paper first introduces two different types of complexity: (i) complexity by design and (ii) the intrinsic complexity of multi-disciplinarity, from the viewpoint of knowledge structure. These two types of complexity do not just make product development processes difficult, but cause design failures through undesired and unpredictable coupling of design parameters. Then, the paper illustrates two multi-disciplinary design cases and analyzes their knowledge structure to clarify how and why these couplings happened.