REALITIES IN INTERDISCIPLINARY SYSTEMS DESIGN
DS 49: Proceedings of NordDesign 2004 Conference, Tampere, Finland, 18.-20.08.2004
Year: 2004
Editor: Lehtonen, Timo; Pulkkinen, Antti and Riitahuhta, Asko
Author: Kaljas, Frid; Kallo, Rommi; Reedik, Vello
Page(s): 250 - 259
Abstract
It is obvious that the integration of different technologies into interdisciplinary systems cannot be treated as their simple summing but as a way of compensating their mutual weaknesses and amplifying the synergy of their integration. A detailed definition of concepts of positive and negative synergy with examples from both categories is given. It is pointed out that the ever-growing competition on the markets has caused the need for radical cuts in product development time and has forced to change the approach to the design for reliability and quality of the non-safely-critical systems. As a result, negative synergy-based infant mortality risks are growing. It is also shown that synergy and quality indicators are in strong correlation forming a platform for competitive reliability. Special attention is paid to the clarification of interrelations between human and technical aspects in the design process. It is shown that human faults and mistakes can also be treated in synergy context. Further a search for synergy-friendly design strategy is provided and it is shown that the Design Structure Matrixes technology is a suitable basis for this purpose. Finally, some case studies of successful synergy-based integration of allied technologies are described. In the conclusion it is arrived at the truth that the synergy-based approach to the interdisciplinary systems design is a possible way to create a complete picture of all realities in design process.
Keywords: interdisciplinary systems, engineering design, Synergy, liability. quality, Structural matrix analysis