The relationship between organizational architecture, product architecture, and product complexity

Abstract

The aircraft gas turbine product architecture and manufacturing infrastructure are used to show the importance in the relationship between the organizational architecture and product architecture. The product complexity, organizational complexity and new product development costs are compared for three major aircraft gas turbine producers spanning the market from 2500 pounds to 100,000 pounds of thrust. It is found that organizational response to product complexity varies widely, resulting in a factor of 2 to 3 in both cycle time and cost for new product development, depending on the enterprise. A relationship between the product complexity and organizational complexity is established based on the documented product development procedures within these companies, and a proportionality is observed between the product complexity derived from the procedures and the expended resources required to develop new products.