IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/uteexx/v56y2011i1p59-79.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Harnessing Product Complexity: Step 1—Establishing Product Complexity Dimensions and Indicators

Author

Listed:
  • Nihal Orfi
  • Janis Terpenny
  • Asli Sahin-Sariisik

Abstract

With today's level of market competition and demand for diverse product offerings, more companies are now pressured to increase product variety as a strategy to maintain and increase market share. In addition to its associated direct costs, variety is considered the main source of product complexity, which has been proven to negatively impact product development time, productivity, costs, and customer satisfaction. Although several researchers have tackled the issue, product complexity continues to be a theoretical concept with different definitions and measurements established based on research area, scope, and objective. This lack of a unified approach has made it difficult for companies to take full advantage of existing research to manage the impact of product complexity. This article introduces five main dimensions of product complexity based on identifying different complexity sources in product design, development, manufacturing, assembly, and supply chain, and on understanding the impact of these sources on different direct and indirect costs. Establishing the dimensions of product complexity is an essential first step in developing a unified product complexity metric to be used as a support tool to improve product design and systematically manage product complexity.

Suggested Citation

  • Nihal Orfi & Janis Terpenny & Asli Sahin-Sariisik, 2011. "Harnessing Product Complexity: Step 1—Establishing Product Complexity Dimensions and Indicators," The Engineering Economist, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(1), pages 59-79.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:uteexx:v:56:y:2011:i:1:p:59-79
    DOI: 10.1080/0013791X.2010.549935
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0013791X.2010.549935
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0013791X.2010.549935?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Park, Kijung & Okudan Kremer, Gül E., 2015. "Assessment of static complexity in design and manufacturing of a product family and its impact on manufacturing performance," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 215-232.
    2. H. Khorshidian & M. Akbarpour Shirazi & S. M. T. Fatemi Ghomi, 2019. "An intelligent truck scheduling and transportation planning optimization model for product portfolio in a cross-dock," Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Springer, vol. 30(1), pages 163-184, January.
    3. Tolonen, Arto & Shahmarichatghieh, Marzieh & Harkonen, Janne & Haapasalo, Harri, 2015. "Product portfolio management – Targets and key performance indicators for product portfolio renewal over life cycle," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(PB), pages 468-477.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:uteexx:v:56:y:2011:i:1:p:59-79. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/UTEE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.