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Guest Blog

The Design Structure Matrix: A Tool for Managing

Complexity

By Tyson Browning on September 15, 2012

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How anddotoyou
analyze
get aour
thousand engineers to agree on the design a complex product in
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a timely way? How do you design such a product to be modular, so that portions of
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and These are a few of the problems addressed by a technique
analytics
called the Design Structure Matrix (DSM), a tool for managing complexity. To
partners. Privacy
date, most of its applications have been in the fields of design and engineering
Policy
management, but it holds promise for a myriad of applications to many kinds of

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8/9/2018 The Design Structure Matrix: A Tool for Managing Complexity - Scientific American Blog Network

systems where it is important to find and control patterns of relationships among

the system’s elements.

What is a DSM? It is a square matrix, where cells on the upper-left to lower-right

diagonal represent the elements of a system and off-diagonal cells represent the
relationships among these elements. For example, in the first 6x6 DSM shown
nearby, the six elements are numbered along the diagonal. (Their full names are
often shown to the left or above the matrix, where there is more room.) The dots
off the diagonal indicate the presence of a direct relationship (e.g., a dependency
or a flow of information) among two elements. For example, the dot in row one
column two could indicate a flow of information from element two to element one.
Instead of a dot to indicate the mere presence of a relationship or link, it is also
possible to use numbers or other symbols to indicate relationship intensity,
probability, or other attributes, such as in the second, numerical version of the
DSM showing the probability of a change in one element causing a change in
another. Many additional extensions to the DSM are possible, such as the color
coding of the elements according to their membership in an organization,
subsystem, process, etc.

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A DSM essentially shows the same information as a graph (q.v., graph theory), a
node-link diagram, or many other possible representations. It is not necessarily a
better representation, but it does have some particular visual advantages including
conciseness and the highlighting of important patterns. As the number of elements
grows, a node-link diagram begins to look like a large plate of spaghetti and
meatballs, whereas as DSM maintains its ease of readability. DSM analyses such as
clustering can group elements according to their membership in a module or team,
such as in the third example DSM where three elements are assigned to each of
two modules. Such modularity is helpful for controlling the emergence of system
behaviors, modifying the system with minimal disruption, and increasing system
robustness and resiliency, among other benefits. DSM also supports analyses of
degrees of separation among elements, indirect and propagating effects, emergent
behaviors, and social network analyses.

A community of researchers and practitioners from around the world has applied
DSMs to models of products, processes, and organizations in a variety of

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8/9/2018 The Design Structure Matrix: A Tool for Managing Complexity - Scientific American Blog Network

industries and areas, including aerospace, automotive, real estate (as in the figure
nearby), buildings, electronics, energy, and pharmaceuticals. Some insights into
these efforts and results are available at the DSM community web site
(www.DSMweb.org) and in a new book, Design Structure Matrix Methods and
Applications. Here is a link to a recent MIT news article on DSM.

This DSM shows a model of the real estate development

process, including the interactions among different
functional groups, at Jones Lang LaSalle. (Image courtesy of
MIT Press.)

This DSM shows a model of the real estate development

process, including the interactions among different
functional groups, at Jones Lang LaSalle. (Image courtesy of
MIT Press.)

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The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Tyson Browning
Tyson Browning is Associate Professor of Operations Management at the
Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. He is

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8/9/2018 The Design Structure Matrix: A Tool for Managing Complexity - Scientific American Blog Network

also the co-author of the book Design Structure Matrix Methods and
Applications (MIT Press, 2012).

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