Risk propagation and mitigation of design change for complex product development (CPD) projects based on multilayer network theory

Abstract Change risk propagation caused by unexpected design change has become a major source of risk to complex product development (CPD) projects and provides great challenge to existing project risk management methods. The aim of this paper is to reveal the law of design change risk propagation and mitigate the disruptive design change risk propagation through improving the robustness and resilience of CPD projects. First, the CPD projects are represented by multilayer networks with product-layer and organization-layer. Then, the model of design change risk propagation is built based on load-capacity model under the consideration of change risk mitigation strategies including redundant resource, inter-partner coordination, and project learning efficiency. Furthermore, the effects of these strategies and their portfolios are estimated through numerical simulation. The results provide the most cost-effective strategies to ultimately recover the multilayer CPD network within a certain time frame. This paper proposes a new perspective to mitigate the design change risk of CPD projects after the definition of project architecture and have implications for project managers to make reasonable decisions according to concrete project contexts.