Principles for designing products with flexibility for future evolution

Tilstra, Andrew H.; Backlund, Peter B.; Seepersad, Carolyn Conner; Wood, Kristin L.

doi:10.1504/ijmassc.2015.069597

Cited by 30 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…The authors of this paper Tackett et al 2014;Watson et al 2016) use the concept of designed-in excess to provide systems with increased flexibility. Tilstra et al have presented several papers on the value of system flexibility and associated design guidelines (Tilstra et al 2009(Tilstra et al , 2012(Tilstra et al , 2015. They incorporate "High Definition Design Structure Matrix" (HDDSM) and "Change Modes and Effect Analysis" as tools to accomplish this.…”

Section: Review Of Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing in Excess Capability to Handle Uncertain Product Requirements in a Developing World Setting

Allen

Mattson

Thacker

2016

Volume 2A: 42nd Design Automation Conference

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Products designed for the developing world often go unused or under used by the intended individuals. Designers with experience in developed areas of the world naturally apply their values to the products they design. This results in a misjudgment of the actual requirements of individuals in developing areas. When the products do not have the ability to adapt to the actual user requirements, long-term adoption is not achieved. The ability of a product to adapt to new or changing requirements has been shown to extend the service life of large complex engineered systems (e.g., aircraft carriers, aircraft, communication systems, and space craft). These systems must remain in service for extended periods of time, even though the environments and requirements may change dramatically. The ability of these complex systems to adapt to meet these new requirements is a valuable attribute. Applying these proven techniques to products designed for the developing world can address the issue of misunderstood requirements. Adaptability is achieved, in this paper, by incorporating appropriate excess capabilities into the original design. These excess capabilities can be identified and analyzed using a numerical search methodology. This paper presents a methodology for increasing the adaptability, and therefore adoptability of products designed for the developing world by incorporating strategically determined excess capabilities.

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Section: Review Of Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing in Excess Capability to Handle Uncertain Product Requirements in a Developing World Setting

Allen

Mattson

Thacker

2016

Volume 2A: 42nd Design Automation Conference

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The concept of ''product evolvability'' differentiate itself from the definitions of general design changeability (Fricke and Schulz 2005;Ross et al 2008) and design flexibility (Rajan et al 2005;de Neufville and Scholtes 2011;Tilstra et al 2013) by emphasizing heritance, path dependences and fitness-improving selection from an evolutionary perspective. Traditional engineering design change literature concerns changes in general, not differentiating positive (i.e., performance-improving) and negative (i.e., performance-reducing) changes.…”

Section: Product Evolvability and Design For Evolvabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The related literature provides a rich set of candidate design principles for evolvability, such as (just to name a few) modularity and autonomy ( (Simpson et al 2001(Simpson et al , 2013. On that basis, Tilstra et al (2013) proposed a categorization of actionable guidelines for implementing these design principles for product flexibility. Beesemyer et al (2011), Fulcoly (2012 and Ricci et al (2014) provide brief reviews of engineering system design principles for evolvability.…”

Section: Product Evolvability and Design For Evolvabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A simulation-based method to evaluate the impact of product architecture on product evolvability

Luo

2015

Res Eng Design

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Products evolve over time via the continual redesigns of interdependent components. Product architecture, which is embodied in the structure of interactions among components, influences the ability for the product to be subsequently evolved. Despite extensive studies of change propagation via inter-component connections, little is known about the specific influences of product architecture on product evolvability. Related metrics and methods to assess the evolvability of products with given architectures are also under-developed. This paper proposes a simulation-based method to assess the isolated effect of product architecture on product evolvability by analyzing a design structure matrix. We define product evolvability as the ability of the product's design to subsequently generate heritable performance-improving variations, and propose a quantitative measure for it. We demonstrate the proposed method by using it to investigate a wide spectrum of model-generated DSMs representing products with varied architectures, and show that modularity and inter-component influence cycles promote product evolvability. Our primary contribution is a repeatable method to assess and compare alternative product architectures for architecture selection or redesign for evolvability. A second contribution is the simulation-based evidence about the impacts of two particular product architectural patterns on product evolvability. Both contributions aim to aid in designing for evolvability.

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“…A variety of methods for increasing CES lifecycle value have been explored in literature. Design for: adaptability [5], flexibility [6,7], changeability [8,9], and reconfigurability [10] all provide system designers with heuristics and tools to design an adaptable CES. The general focus of these studies has been on product architecture; with the optimization of system modularity and design of interfaces [11] as tools to reduce the time and cost, or generically "effort", for modifying a system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Case Study of Evolvability and Excess on the B-52 Stratofortress and F/A-18 Hornet

Long

Ferguson

2017

Volume 4: 22nd Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle Conference; 11th International Conference on Micro- And Nanosystems

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The moment a system is put into service it begins to lose value as technological and societal changes accrue while the system is frozen in the state it was constructed. System decision makers are faced with the choice of accepting a decline in performance, updating the design, or retiring the system. Each time a decision maker faces these alternatives, the value of the available options must be evaluated to determine the preferred course of action. A design that can adapt to changes with minimal cost should provide more value over a longer period than a system that is initially less costly, but less adaptable. This is especially desirable for systems that have large initial costs and/or a lengthy development cycle. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the United States Air Force (USAF) B-52 Stratofortress and the United States Navy (USN) F/A-18 Hornet to characterize the changes in desired capabilities and what system attributes allowed them to either successfully adapt or prevented them from adapting. These observations allow the development of heuristics that designers can use during system design to enhance system lifetime value.

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Principles for designing products with flexibility for future evolution

Cited by 30 publications

References 44 publications

Designing in Excess Capability to Handle Uncertain Product Requirements in a Developing World Setting

Designing in Excess Capability to Handle Uncertain Product Requirements in a Developing World Setting

A simulation-based method to evaluate the impact of product architecture on product evolvability

A Case Study of Evolvability and Excess on the B-52 Stratofortress and F/A-18 Hornet

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