Engineer-To-Order Plant Design: Assessing System Complexity and Hour Use Based on Directed Network Graphs

For an engineer-to-order case company that produces processing facilities, the complexity of conducted product designs is visualized with network graphs. The graphs represent the primary flow of material between the main functional components of the facilities. The network graphs exposes the design solution space of the analyzed products and the densities of the network graphs are used as measures of system complexities. The densities are compared to hour use in the corresponding projects to reveal the impact on hour use based on this complexity measure.For a population of facilities with similar and sometimes identical build, the network graphs revealed varying combinations of components connectivity. Comparing graph types to hour use indicated that dense graphs increase the likelihood of spending more hours in the development project – mainly in the later project phases where the financial impact of increased hour use is typically worse. The results raise the questions, whether all solutions are equally profitable and how network graphs could aid design choices early in the projects, in order to limit additional late-phase risk.