Identification of the Optimal Design Based on Evaluation of Product Configurations Considering Specific Product Adaptabilities

Abstract

Adaptable design is a new design approach to create products that can be easily adapted to satisfy the changed functional requirements. Adaptable design approach can reduce the environment impact as well as to improve product competitiveness by replacing multiple products with a single adaptable product. In this research, a method to evaluate adaptabilities of mechanical products based on configurations of these products is introduced. In this method, different functional requirements are described by adaptation tasks. Each adaptation task is achieved by a product whose configuration is modeled by a number of modules based on modular design approach. Adaptation from one product to another one is conducted by changing modules (i.e., adding new modules and removing existing modules) of this product. Adaptabilities of a product to change to other products considering the adaptation tasks are obtained based on the required costs to change from configuration of this product to the configurations of the adapted products. An industrial application is provided to show the effectiveness of the introduced method.