Managing Design Complexity to Improve on Cost, Quality, Variety, and Time-to-Market Performance Variables

This paper contains a model of waste elimination through design. It argues for the importance of managing design complexity in improving cost, quality, variety, and time-to-market performance variables. Management of design complexity is identified with creation, choice, and application of design problem representations, divisions of design labor, and product architectures that provably eliminate waste. The paper's thesis is illustrated with a comparison of Toyota's technology strategy (based on waste elimination) to that of General Motors (based on frontier-shifting investment)