Managing Sociotechnical Complexity in Engineering Design Projects

Hassannezhad, Mohammad; Cantamessa, Marco; Montagna, Francesca; Clarkson, PJ

doi:10.1115/1.4042614

Cited by 17 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(61 reference statements)

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“…DRM has been widely adopted to develop, validate and introduce design supports (approaches, tools and methods, among others) (Eckert et al, 2003;Marxen & Albers, 2012). DRM has been proven to provide rigour to Design research; it is compatible with a Research through Design (RtD) approach (Godin & Zahedi, 2014) and has been adapted to embrace broader applied research agendas (Eckert et al, 2003) in complex systems (Hassannezhad et al, 2019).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A holistic outcome-based approach to co-create healthcare systems.

Landa-Avila¹,

Escobar-Tello²,

Jun³

et al. 2020

Proceedings of DRS

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Healthcare needs to be delivered more holistically, in a way that addresses outcomes for different stakeholders at different levels. Systems thinking has conceptually helped the understanding of the increasing complexity of healthcare outcomes. However, little consideration has been given on how to practically apply this concept to holistic outcome understanding to (re)design healthcare systems. Therefore, this paper aims to develop and evaluate a holistic outcome-based approach to healthcare systems co-creation. Participatory mapping workshops and interviews to co-visualise outcomes as an interconnected system were conducted with two groups: twenty-three design practitioners/researchers and twenty-one patients and healthcare service providers. Results emerged from network analysis which identified critical outcomes, disagreements, gaps and opportunities for system (re)design. The results demonstrated the potential role that this approach could have in gathering, communicating and negotiating the complex needs of multiple stakeholders for healthcare system (re)design.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A holistic outcome-based approach to co-create healthcare systems.

Landa-Avila¹,

Escobar-Tello²,

Jun³

et al. 2020

Proceedings of DRS

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show abstract

“…These include the agent based perspective that focuses on individual actors, their capabilities, knowledge and appropriate assignment to tasks (e.g. Crowder et al, 2012;Perišić et al, 2018;Hassannezhad et al, 2019); the system dynamics perspective, that emphasises influences on the development process, such as management levers and policies (e.g. Lyneis and Ford, 2007;Le et al, 2012); and the coordination perspective, which emphasises project structures and mechanisms for managing dependencies among activities, such as ensuring appropriate response to exceptions from standard work (e.g.…”

Section: Other Models Of the Engineering Design Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving the engineering design process by simulating iteration impact with ASM2.0

Wynn

Clarkson

2021

Res Eng Design

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Engineering design processes that are dependent on Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) tools commonly involve complex patterns of tasks, including concurrency and intertwined iterations. There are often inefficiencies and improvement opportunities in such processes, but it can be difficult to identify and evaluate them-partly because of the complex iteration patterns, and partly because process knowledge is usually tacit and often distributed among process participants so that it is difficult to appreciate the causes and effects of iteration in an integrated way. The Applied Signposting Model (ASM) was developed to address these issues during more than a decade of research and case studies in the aerospace sector. This article describes an evolved version of the ASM, called ASM2.0, alongside a detailed case to demonstrate its application to improve CAE-driven, iteration-intensive engineering design processes. A review of applications is also provided. A differentiating feature of ASM2.0 is that it integrates visually-familiar flowchart mapping with quantitative analysis of process performance, to enable the modelling of complex iteration patterns that are typical of engineering design practice.

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“…Over the years, there are two typical types of studies related to the socio-technical concept that can be distinguished. The first type mainly focuses on improving the efficiency of project management (Keating et al 2001;Hassannezhad et al 2019). It highlights the complex interactions between the subjective perceptions of workers and the objective characteristics of work processes (Pan & Scarbrough 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robust design of complex socio-technical systems against seasonal effects: a network motif-based approach

Xiao

Sha

2022

Des. Sci.

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Seasonal effects can significantly impact the robustness of socio-technical systems (STS) to demand fluctuations. There is an increasing need to develop novel design approaches that can support capacity planning decisions for enhancing the robustness of STS against seasonal effects. This paper proposes a new network motif-based approach to supporting capacity planning in STS for an improved seasonal robustness. Network motifs are underlying nonrandom subgraphs within a complex network. In this approach, we introduce three motif-based metrics for system performance evaluation and capacity planning decision-making. The first one is the imbalance score of a motif (e.g., a local service network), the second one is the measurement of a motif’s seasonal robustness, and the third one is a capacity planning decision criterion. Based on these three metrics, we validate that the sensitivity of STS performance against seasonal effects is highly correlated with the imbalanced capacity between service nodes in an STS. Correspondingly, we formulate a design optimisation problem to improve the robustness of STS by rebalancing the resources at critical service nodes. To demonstrate the utility of the approach, a case study on Divvy bike-sharing system in Chicago is conducted. With a focus on the size-3 motifs (a subgraph consisting three docked stations), we find that there is a significant correlation between the difference of the number of docks among the stations in a motif and the return/rental performance of such a motif against seasonal changes. Guided by this finding, our design approach can successfully balance out the number of docks between those stations that have caused the most severe seasonal perturbations. The results also imply that the network motifs can be an effective local structural representation in support of STS robust design. Our approach can be generally applied in other STS where the system performances are significantly impacted by seasonal changes, for example, supply chain networks, transportation systems and power grids.

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Managing Sociotechnical Complexity in Engineering Design Projects

Cited by 17 publications

References 35 publications

A holistic outcome-based approach to co-create healthcare systems.

A holistic outcome-based approach to co-create healthcare systems.

Improving the engineering design process by simulating iteration impact with ASM2.0

Robust design of complex socio-technical systems against seasonal effects: a network motif-based approach

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