1 14 TH INTERNATIONAL DEPENDENCY AND STRUCTURE MODELLING CONFERENCE, DSM’12 KYOTO, JAPAN, SEPTEMBER 13 – 14, 2012 Interplay between Product Architecture and Organizational Structure Kaushik Sinha 1 , Denman James 2 , Olivier de Weck 1 ABSTRACT The design and development of large-scale engineered systems is a highly integrated process, and requires the integration of efforts of large numbers of individuals from many design specialties. In the case that there are significant architecture changes due to technology insertion, customer requirements or component configuration for performance, integration of design efforts become more challenging. We seek to understand to what degree the novelty of the product architecture causes potential inefficiencies in the product development organization and existence of engineering standard work documents that are used as guides to interface management and as objects that helps cross discipline boundaries. The impact of novelty of the new product architecture on the existing product development organization was estimated by quantifying the number of new connections that need to be handled both within component integrated process teams and well as across them. It was found that 55 new cross-team interactions appear to be required (+25%) and 38 new interactions within teams appear necessary. A close interplay between the product architecture and organizational architecture of the product development team in a feedback sense has been demonstrated for a real-world, large, complex engineered system. Keywords: Design Structure Matrix (DSM), Conway’s law, Multi-domain Networks, organizational impact, novelty. 1. INTRODUCTION With much improved performance and functional features come increased complexity in engineered complex systems. This complexity manifests in many forms and in different domains. The main components of complexity in engineered systems are (i) structural complexity coming primarily due to the physical architecture of the system stemming from the number of physical components, and their interaction structure; (ii) dynamic complexity due to interaction structure and associated uncertainties in function/behavior space and (iii) organizational complexity due to the product development process itself. It is widely believed that these three components of complexity are strongly correlated amongst themselves. This correlation is captured in famed Conway’s law [6] (see fig. 1). Conway’s law states that given an organizational structure, the resulting product architecture would resemble the organizational structure of the development team [6]. Complex engineered systems are designed by large teams of individuals, which are organized based on various business goals and legacy experience with system design. When significant changes are made to the product architecture, changes may also need to be made to the work processes as well as organizational re-alignment to reflect the changes. It is often observed that work processes and organizational alignment often lag behind major technical changes. While organizational changes can be mapped to management criteria, connection of the organizational alignment to the product architecture would provide benefits to both the technical aspects of the product, as well as to the business through reduced cycle times and earlier discovery of conflicts. This alignment of organization to product architecture would also allow the organization to most efficiently meet both technical and business goals. The main challenge is that product architectural models, functional performance models as well as organizational work process diagrams often exist separately from each other such that misalignment issues are not easily detected. The later this detection occurs, for example during qualification testing or even worse – during operations when the engine is already in operation, the more costly the misalignment becomes. The complexity of 1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139. 2 Mechanical Systems Engineering, Pratt & Whitney, East Hartford, CT.