Design Structure Matrix设计结构矩阵.doc

1.Introduction Products, processes and organizations are all complex systems. The most practical and reasonable approach to complex structures have involved in some way or the other decomposing the complex unit to smaller subsystems. Subsystems, being smaller in size and less complex enhances understanding of the big picture. The systems behavior can further be analyzed by establishing relations between the subsystems and studying their input and output components. Non-trivial projects have consists of numerous processes (subsystems) that are dependent on one another. These interdependencies keep growing with the size of the project increasing the level of complexity. Numerous approaches to solve this problem have been adopted, PERT, CPM being quite common. However, these approaches did not scale up as they were only capable of handling sequential and parallel processes. The need to handle iterative processes within complex projects led to the development of a new tool called Design Structure Matrix (DSM). DSM differs from other project management tools as it relies on information flows rather than work flows Also known as the “Dependency Structure Matrix”, “ Problem Solving Matrix”, the DSM is a system analysis and project management tool. As a system analysis tool it provides a concise representation of a complex system and a capture method for the interactions between the processes. As a project management tool DSM provides a representation that allows for feedback and cyclic task dependencies. DSM finds its applications mainly in the engineering applications, as they tend to exhibit cyclic dependencies. 2.1Design Structure Matrix: Design Structure Matrix is a matrix representation of a project. The matrix contains a list of all tasks and the corresponding information exchange patterns. It gives information pieces or parameters that are required to start a certain task and where the information generated by that task feed into i.e. which other tasks within the