For whom the chaos calls

One common theme from both history and technology is a perpetual struggle between simplicity and complexity. Simplicity is about energy efficiency and reducing the chance of errors, all at the risk of being trapped in a niche habitat. Complexity is about being clever, having more options to adapt and expand, all at the expense of bleeding energy and increasing the chance of errors.

Nature tends to balance simplicity and complexity by trimming excessive manifestations of either, though humans have become quite proficient at increasing complexity while delaying (or even avoiding) the inevitable exhaustion.

Proper constraints define structural rigidity and expansion boundaries within a given environment, so that simplicity and complexity can safely coexist. Well-defined constraints empower, while poorly defined constrains cause suffocation or runaway complexity. The former stifles innovation; the latter can lead to a vicious cycle culminating in a full systemic collapse.

As usual, Hollywood is helping us to comprehend the relationship between simplicity, complexity and constraints.

• “The Last Samurai” presented a case of antiquated complexity leading to extinction: superbly trained warriors losing to mere peasants armed with the advanced complexity of Western military technology. The insanely spectacular devastation Ukraine inflicted on Russia’s forces in the early weeks of the 2022 invasion came from Ukraine’s adoption of XXI-century data-centric warfare technologies vs. their more numerous and hardware-heavy XX-century thinking opponents. Well-managed complexity dominated over stubborn simplicity.
• The “Jurassic Park” movies showed the pitfalls of excessive complexity, with “Jurassic World” being my personal favorite. A succession of overconfident enterprises produced increasingly lethal monsters while counting on hyper-complex setups to contain them. The containment technology inevitably failed due to a lack of safety protocols, as well as the hubris, greed, and personnel malice of its creators. On the other hand, it is telling that the Indominus Rex was defeated by a team of several more primitive dinosaurs led by humans, because sometimes quantity has a simple quality of its own.
• Globalization has shifted Western constraints of labor-intensive and ‘dirty’ industries to low-cost and low-regulation destinations, allowing European and American economies to bring their living standards to unprecedented heights. Yet, it created complicated (and vulnerable) supply chains and decimated many Western competencies. Over the last 100 years, Western societies have moved from a fairly simplistic “God, country, family” set of loyalty constraints to an explosive 1:1:1 mix of baby formula, DEI, and ESG. The 2013-2019 “Has Fallen” series, followed in 2024 by “The Beekeeper” and “Civil War,” have sequentially and convincingly visualized the result — a slow-motion crumble of the seemingly omnipotent American powerhouse.

The engineering and manufacturing means of production represent a super-complex and rather fragile function of Newton‘s, Moore‘s, Conway‘s, Parkinson‘s, Murphy‘s, and other laws. They are spurred by in-house innovation and competition, restrained by corporate limbo, strangled by government regulations, and torn apart by growing supply chain troubles, cyber threats, and societal chasms.

The modern engineering and manufacturing environment is simultaneously split by explicit functional constraints into design, purchasing, manufacturing, assembly, MRO, etc., and it is leaking and tearing at the seams. This is particularly evident when design complexities spill into production and distribution. Far too often, massive variations in PLM/CAD are ‘thrown over the fence’ to the production organizations, causing complications and delays, with each upgrade creating more bumps on the road.

There seems to be no present industry-standard expectation for PLM to be easily deliverable for downstream consumption. While PLMs must often handle multiple CAD formats like CATIA and NX, procurement, build, and inspection should not care. Their input must always be as simple as possible: for example, JT for 3D viewing, PDF for 2D documents, and something consistent for the structures. Perhaps the next paradigm shift will be the PLM creating a standard CAD-agnostic output. That would sever the umbilical cord and install a safety constraint between competitively unique design sophistication and desired production and distribution simplicity.

PDF is (obviously) a universal standard for document exchange between teams, business, and the government: it doesn’t matter what the authoring tool was; anyone can read the result as long as it can be sent via PDF. Sadly, there is no PDF-like medium that simultaneously meets ISO precision and popular adoption for CAD.

While 3DXML and PLMXML offer some downstream viewing options, they are not ISO, and as such are relatively unpredictable. And then, there is a long-term data archiving dream: LOTAR‘s ISO 14721 model already provides such interoperability infrastructure. The LOTAR model already covers critical 3D CAD information, composites, harnesses, etc. Perhaps the right path for PLM systems is to align their entire downstream output with LOTAR?

Interestingly, one of the big remaining hurdles for LOTAR is Semantic PMI. While it has been adopted by ISO, CAD vendors and the industry in general are still lagging behind. For example, from what we know about experiments converting CATIA to JT, the presentation of PMI is consistent, but the Semantic values are not. The industry needs time to untangle the various Semantic terminologies across multiple platforms.

Speaking of the bigger picture, the Western industry still owns highly sophisticated intellectual property, hardware, software and energy systems, yet its long-term survival depends on unrestricted access to offshore materials and on-shore availability of a motivated and competent workforce. These are no longer guaranteed with the present turmoil in the world and within Western societies – even if things do not get worse.

The solution for manufacturing may come from extreme automation. Complex-inside and simple-outside AI engines will handle swift alternative material and design ideas, and should even compensate for the reduction in workforce engineering expertise. The remaining loyal and competent humans will be assigned to higher-level decision-making and control.

By the way, Bourbon-driven software development practices offer a successful and safe paradigm for navigating the storm of simplicity, complexity and constraints on a grand scale: very small changes deployed daily or even more frequently, using hardened containers, and along the lines of zero-trust security.

We at Senticore apply our hearts and minds to the wise inquiry of all things simple and complex, and have a keen eye for the right balance. Talk to us about mapping the simplicity, complexity, and constraints of your engineering and manufacturing environment, so they can all evolve in harmony towards successful outcomes.