Align to Design: Navigating Complexity By Synchronizing The System And Its Development

Modern design environments are increasingly defined by interconnectedness, globalization, sustainability demands, and market dynamism, creating challenges in developing robust systems. Despite advancements in Systems Engineering (SE), persistent issues such as cost overruns, high failure rates, and coordination difficulties in multidisciplinary teams hinder success. This research aims to bridge these gaps by addressing complexity—a central challenge that spans both technical and socio-technical dimensions—through a structured framework and tool support.

To characterize and manage complexity in multidisciplinary system design, we propose the SSPT framework, which examines four key dimensions: System, Social aspects, Process, and Tooling. Within these dimensions, we identify five critical challenges in complexity management: System Alignment (SA), Process-Social Alignment (PSA), Tool-Social-System Process Alignment (TSSPA), Social-System Alignment (SSA), and System-Process Alignment (SPA). Among these, SPA remains the least explored yet plays a crucial role in ensuring coherence between system architecture and engineering processes.

To address SPA and enhance multidisciplinary collaboration, we introduce InDexign, a design-support tool that leverages Visual Storytelling to improve information sharing across engineering teams. Rather than introducing additional workload, InDexign connects existing solutions, offering a simple and integral approach that integrates seamlessly into established workflows.

The evaluation of InDexign was conducted with engineering teams at Thales Nederland B.V. using a combined methodological approach, incorporating Systems Engineering research methods with Human-Centered Design principles. The results demonstrate the tool’s usability and its potential to improve SPA by facilitating better information flow in complex design environments.

Future research will focus on validating SSPT and InDexign in operational settings and scaling their application across industries. By formalizing evaluation methodologies, this research contributes to both SE theory and practice, offering structured strategies to navigate complexity in an era of rapid technological evolution and global interconnectedness.