One key to design is to relieve co-dependency between components.
The design of a car is less complicated because it has been reduced to components. The steering components operate independently from the exhaust components. You can improve the exhaust component without having to think about the steering component.
A part of design is determining what the relationships between components are and then designing to remove the relationships until you have a set of independent components.
A set of independent components is better able to adapt to change since the change can be associated with only some of the components rather than the entire design.
Unraveling into discrete components is an essential design skill.
The skill applies equally well to physical design as well as process design. A process that has steps that can be processed where there is little dependency between steps is more efficient and more flexible and adaptable than one with many dependencies.
Design for simplicity.