During the last years, companies in high-technology marketplaces were confronted
with technology innovations, dynamic markets, changing customer requirements
and uncertainty. Manufacturing companies can’t escape these trends. To cope with
these trends, companies try to develop new product variants, which lead to increased
complexity. Product development is characterized by different factors such
as product, product portfolio and the development process. Complexity management
in product development is a strategic issue for companies to be competitive. A
systematic literature review was performed to identify and analyze the existing approaches
for complexity management in all fields. Based on this, a new approach for
managing complexity in variant-rich product development was developed. It encourages
the reader to manage product development’s complexity. In this approach,
complexity is systematically analyzed and evaluated to create conditions for a target
oriented managing and controlling of complexity in product development.