Evaluation of Complexity Management Systems – Systematical and Maturity-based Approach

Abstract

The way to deal with the strongly increasing complexity of the company itself and its environment has become a key competitive factor. The complexity within a production company is characterized by the challenges encountered in daily business processes and can be described by the four dimensions of complexity: variety, heterogeneity, dynamics and non- transparency, as well as their interrelationships. Despite this increasing importance, only few companies have access to adequate tools for complexity management. Most companies have not introduced or implemented yet a complexity management system/approach or they do not know, if the used complexity management methods are efficient and adequate. Therefore, the question rises: How can a company be reviewed and evaluated regarding its complexity management skills? Maturity models can be used to support the analysis and assessment of skills and development-levels of products, processes or organizations by defining different levels of maturity, in order to assess the extent to which an object fulfills defined qualitative requirements. The various levels of maturity within such models can be used to describe the different achievable skill levels. Maturity models not only include methods for the assessment of skill levels, but also provide incentives and measures to increase the degree of maturity. After the introduction of measures to increase the skill level of maturity these models are also suitable to measure and evaluate the progress made. This paper presents an approach for an evaluation model of complexity management systems. First, the basics of the so-called advanced Complexity Management are given, highlighting the difference between complexity and complicacy as well as the comparing external and internal complexity. The fields and dimensions of complexity are presented as well. After that, maturity models fundamentals are presented by showing state-of-the-art maturity model approaches. Furthermore, the overall maturity-based approach for evaluation of complexity management systems, especially the maturity of their functionalities and capabilities regarding the needs and purposes of manufacturing enterprises, is presented by adapting and combining existing methods and models. The maturity-based approach describes different levels of complexity management systems within a production company, also taking into account recommendations and measures to increase the degree of maturity.

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