Technical paperOptimal adaptable design for creating the changeable product based on changeable requirements considering the whole product life-cycle☆
Introduction
With the advances of design and manufacturing technologies, more products with good quality and low costs are produced to satisfy the requirements of customers. The advances of these technologies, however, result in excessive wastes at the ends of the life-cycles of these products. To solve this problem, a new design approach, called adaptable design, was introduced by Gu et al. [1] to create a single adaptable product to replace the multiple products. Different from the traditional products whose expected functions are specified before the design process and these functions are maintained through services and repairs in the stage of product utilization, functions of the adaptable products in their life-cycles can be improved or changed through adaptation activities such as upgrading and reconfiguration.
Since the introduction of this concept, many methods and applications have been developed to implement adaptable design. Sand and Gu [2] developed modularization and upgrade planning methods for adaptable design and implemented a system called AdaptEx based on the introduced methods. Xu et al. [3] employed adaptable design method in the design of gantry-type CNC machines. Shao et al. [4] used the adaptable design method in the design of a product family. Li et al. [5] introduced a guideline for achieving product adaptability through the adaptable design process. Li et al. [6] also developed a method to evaluate the specific product adaptability by considering three types of product adaptation tasks: extendibility of functions, upgradeability of modules and customizability of components. Fletcher et al. [7] developed a method to measure general product adaptability by comparing the actual structure of the product with its ideal structure that can be easily changed. A comprehensive review on the concepts, methods and applications of adaptable design is provided in [8].
Some design methodologies developed prior to the introduction of adaptable design concept can also be used to partially achieve the goals of adaptable design. For example, reconfigurable design approach was introduced to create a reconfigurable machine to achieve the functions of several machines by reconfiguration of the components of this machine [9]. The modular design [10], [11], product platform design [12], [13], [14], product family/portfolio design methods [14], [15], [16], and the mass customization design methods [17], [18], [19], [20] can be used to improve structures of the products, so these products can be easily changed for achieving different functions. Reconfigurable design aims at replacing multiple products with a single one to reduce the product cost. The changes of requirements, product structures and product parameters in the product life-cycle, such as extension of additional functions and upgrade of modules in later stages of the product utilization, are not considered in reconfigurable design. Modular design, product platform design, product family/portfolio design, and mass customization design aims at reducing the manufacturing efforts while providing large variety of products to better satisfy customer requirements. The designed products using modular, product platform, product family/portfolio, and mass customization design methods are usually not adaptable.
Despite the progress, the presently developed adaptable design methods primarily focus on the improvement of product structures to reduce the effort of adaptation tasks. Since the objective of adaptable design is to create a product that can be adapted in different time periods of its life-cycle, study on the creation of an adaptable product considering the changes of design requirements in the whole product life-cycle is needed.
In this research, a new method to identify the optimal adaptable product considering changes of design requirements, configurations and parameters in the whole product life-cycle is introduced. In this method, the design requirements are defined as functions of a life-cycle time parameter. Design configurations, parameters, and evaluation measures are also changed in different life-cycle periods to achieve these requirements. Optimization is employed to identify the optimal product considering the whole product life-cycle.
Section snippets
An optimal adaptable design model
Adaptable design is a new design approach to create a design or a product that can be easily adapted to satisfy the changed customer requirements [1]. In adaptable design, both design adaptability and product adaptability need to be considered. Design adaptability is the capability of an existing design to be adapted to create a modified design based on the changed requirements. Product adaptability is the capability of a physical product to be adapted to satisfy the changed requirements.
Modeling of life-cycle time parameter
The life-cycle time of a product from its birth to its death is modeled by a parameter whose value is changed between and representing the time at product purchase and the time at product disposal/recycle, respectively.
The life-cycle time can be assigned with different types of values.
- •
Continuous
For example, the time that a battery used in a vehicle can be described by (year).
- •
Discrete
For example, the time that a battery of a vehicle needs to be checked can be described
Modeling of design candidates
A design candidate is modeled by design configurations and design parameters considering the product life-cycle span . At each life-cycle time point , the design candidate is described by a design configuration whose design parameters are assigned with specific values. The life-cycle time is the only variable for modeling a design candidate. At different life-cycle time points, the design configurations and parameter values could be different.
Many design candidates can be created
A case study and discussions on possible engineering applications
A case study example is provided in this section to demonstrate the effectiveness of the newly developed adaptable design method. Possible applications in different engineering disciplines are also discussed in this section.
Conclusions
A method to identify the optimal adaptable product considering changes of requirements, configurations and parameters in the whole product life-cycle is introduced in this research. In this optimal adaptable design model, the requirements are defined as functions of a newly introduced life-cycle time parameter. Design configurations, parameters, and evaluation measures are also changed in different life-cycle time periods to satisfy these different requirements. Optimization is employed to
Acknowledgments
This research is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada through its Discovery Grant, the China Scholarship Council, the Special Research Fund from the North China Electric Power University, and the Guangdong Province Science Foundation through its Innovation Team Grant (58351503101000001).
References (24)
- et al.
Adaptable design
CIRP Annals—Manufacturing Technology
(2004) - et al.
Reconfigurable machine tools
CIRP Annals—Manufacturing Technology
(2001) - et al.
Customizability analysis in design for mass customization
Computer-Aided Design
(2004) A multi-level optimization approach considering product realization process alternatives and parameters for improving manufacturability
Journal of Manufacturing Systems
(1997)- et al.
AdaptEx: extending product life cycles through strategic product upgrades
- Xu YS, Chen YL, Gu P, Wang G. Adaptable design of products and manufacturing systems: methods and applications. In:...
- Shao X, Wang Z, Zhang G, Li P, Gu P. Adaptability measure for product family-based adaptable design. In: Proceeding of...
- Li Y, Gu P, Xue D. Design process for product adaptability: method and application. In: Proceedings of the 16th CIRP...
- et al.
Design for product adaptability
Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications
(2008) - et al.
A method for quantifying adaptability in engineering design
Concurrent Engineering: Research and Applications
(2009)
Adaptable design: concepts, methods and applications
Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture
Product design for modularity
Cited by (43)
Modelling the dynamics of customer requirements considering their lability and sensitivity in product development
2024, Advanced Engineering InformaticsDigital twin driven smart product design framework
2020, Digital Twin Driven Smart DesignCAES by design: A user-centered approach to designing Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) systems for future electrical grid: A case study for Ontario
2019, Sustainable Energy Technologies and AssessmentsCitation Excerpt :Another benefit of this approach is the ability to create a uniform process for analyzing the feasibility and design limitations of customized CAES systems. Finally, utilizing UCD results in enhanced design adaptability, which is the flexibility of a system design to be altered, allowing it to incorporate new requirements once introduced [47–49]. UCD methodology has been extensively used in many areas of system design; however, at the time of writing this paper, this method has not been applied explicitly to designing grid-scale energy storage systems.
Personalized product configuration framework in an adaptable open architecture product platform
2017, Journal of Manufacturing SystemsCitation Excerpt :Product adaptability is the capability of a physical product to be adapted to satisfy the changed requirements [26]. To meet dynamic changing CRs, approaches have been proposed, to: (a) modularize and upgrade product planning [29], (b) cope with variations in users' intents, context changes and evolutions [30], (c) provide design engineers with an objective assessment of the degree to which a product can be adapted [31], (d) identify the optimal adaptable product considering changes of requirements, configurations and parameters in the whole product life-cycle [32], and to achieve robust adaptable design [33]. Due to its advantages in delivering adaptable designs or products to satisfy dynamic CRs, it can be utilized to develop the product configuration system, e.g. product platform and product family modeling.
- ☆
An earlier version of this paper was published in the Proceedings of the ASME 2010 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2010.