Adaptable design of open architecture products with robust performance

Abstract

Adaptable design is an approach to design adaptable products whose modules/configurations and parameter values can be changed during an operation stage to satisfy different customer requirements. An open architecture product is an adaptable product with open interfaces to allow the third-party vendors to develop new add-on modules and connect these add-on modules through the open interfaces. In this work, an open architecture adaptable product is modelled by a platform, alternative add-on modules, and open interfaces to connect the add-on modules with the platform. Both the specific add-on modules that need to be designed at the product development stage and the unknown add-on modules that could be added in the future are considered. In this research, a novel robust design approach is introduced to identify the optimal design of an open architecture adaptable product whose functional performance measures are the least sensitive to variations of the product and operating parameters due to uncertainties. First, characteristics of open architecture adaptable products are discussed. Methods for modelling of platform, add-on modules, and open interfaces are then introduced. A multi-level optimisation method is subsequently explained to identify the optimal design configuration and parameters considering product performance measures and their variations.

Keywords:

• adaptable products
• open architecture products
• robust design
• uncertainties

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors wish to thank the Leading Talent Project of Guangdong Province, China, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 51375287] for providing financial supports to this research.