Int. J. Industrial and Systems Engineering, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2012 279 Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Design for complexity: a global perspective through industrial enterprises analyst and designer Ibrahim H. Garbie Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 33, Al-Khoud 123, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman Fax: +968 2441 1316 E-mail: garbie@squ.edu.om Abstract: Industrial enterprises analysts and/or designers should be aware of the impact of complexity in their organisations, although they are often defined as being complex. Nowadays, the researchers focused their attention on design for manufacturing, design for assembly, design for cost or design for quality, design for X, etc. they did not mention design for complexity as an important issue especially during the existing global financial crisis. Design for complexity is a systemic approach that simultaneously considers optimising design objectives (i.e. minimise complexity level), variables (parameters) and constraints. This paper includes how to present the concepts of complexity to guide industrial enterprises analysts and designers with the most effective issues and perspective strategies for analysing, planning and eliminating complexity to satisfy design of industrial enterprises. Based on these aspects, the complexity levels will be analysed and evaluated through identifying four major issues: design for vision complexity, design for system structure, design for operating complexity and design for evaluating complexity. The ultimate goal of this paper is to provide the industrial enterprises designers with such complexity information. This analysis shows that the design for complexity is a huge task and should be optimised and taken into considerations when designing an industrial enterprise. Keywords: analysis of industrial enterprises; design for complexity; complexity analysis. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Garbie, I.H. (2012) ‘Design for complexity: a global perspective through industrial enterprises analyst and designer’, Int. J. Industrial and Systems Engineering, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp.279–307. Biographical notes: Ibrahim H. Garbie is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the Sultan Qaboos University, Sultanate of Oman. He received PhD in the Department of Industrial Engineering from the University of Houston, Texas, USA in 2003. His current research focuses on manufacturing/production systems design, complexity analysis in industrial firms, manufacturing leanness, agility measures and reconfiguration of manufacturing systems. He is a Senior Member of IIE.