Simplicity is the new complexity

This may be an old song to most of us but, all day long, I keep repeating my engineers: "Guys, create things that are simple, find the simplest solutions to the most complex problems, and if the problem is too big, cut it into little pieces and find simple solutions to each of them".

I personally think doing things in a simple manner is one key to survive in the competitive engineering world.

Why should we fight for simplicity?

The most obvious reason is that, when developing industrial products, the simplest things, the simplest assemblies with the simplest components have proven to be the most robust and the most reliable solutions. And in the end, robustness is the holly graal every customer is looking for.

Now let me share my feelings why it is daily becoming so complex to make simple things.

Reason1: brain appetite for complexity. Engineering teams are high skilled people with big big big brains. Maybe too big sometimes. And this makes our too big brain to search for complexity to be fed and to be satisfied. "I am so proud to have found this complex solution no one could have found except me, hey hey!". Well, in 2016, a young engineer should not only be proud of having found a solution to an engineering problem but also be proud in the fact that the solution is a simple one.

Reason2: in 2016, complexity is low cost. The most complex engineering tools our engineers parents were dreaming to have are now available at almost no cost. As an example, 3D real time simulation is free. Computational Fluid Dynamics is free. Very heavy calculation loads can now be run on a computer any kid has at home. Moreover, 3D printers and additive manufacturing are now available to any engineering team to generate in few hours a product with impossible shapes and colours (often ugly black or white colors!). So a very complex environment is easily available to anybody with no money or training barriers.

Reason3: complexity is often thought as a competition killer. "My process of assembly, my recipe, is so complex that no one will be able to copy me". Hummm, there is also a high risk that a too complex recipe will not be possibly reproduced in different plants of my own company, or may drift in time which will in the end make my lovely products fail. 

Well, I am sure there are hundreds of other reasons that make complexity so attractive to design engineering teams like mine. And so, I keep on fighting, repeating every morning to my little audience:

"Simplicity is the new complexity!"