Collaborative Research: Innovations in Product Flexibility

这项合作研究的主要目标是建立基本原则和全面的衡量标准和决策工具，以支持灵活产品的设计。产品柔性被定义为产品对竞争市场压力、快速技术变化以及短暂和多维客户需求等因素的适应能力。具体地说，这项研究集中在调查基本原则和技术，以增强产品在未来进化变化中的灵活性，即使这些变化的确切形式事先不知道。为实现这一目标，计划开展基础研究，以建立(1)客观评估和比较产品柔性的综合度量和决策工具，(2)部分基于对柔性产品的经验研究，设计柔性产品架构的基本原则和可传授的指导方针，以及(3)考虑到预测柔性产品价值的难度并确定具有适当柔性水平的设计的严格、随机的决策分析方法。这项研究将通过(1)更有效地表征柔性，(2)建立设计柔性产品体系结构的基本原则和可传授的方法，以及(3)提供在面对不确定性时涉及柔性的设计决策的框架，从而改进设计创新、柔性产品的方法。当将这些知识转移到工业中时，这些知识将有助于提高产品质量，减少成本和上市时间，使产品更具可持续性，并对人类需求和不断变化的市场做出反应。为了将研究从实验室转移到课堂，将创建具有动手活动和深入示例的产品灵活性教学模块。教学模块将在德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校和美国空军学院的研究生和本科生课程中推出。在一门关于产品设计和原型的研究生课程中，学生将应用研究成果为身体和智力残疾的人设计灵活的辅助技术。

The primary objective of this collaborative research is to establish fundamental principles and a comprehensive metric and decision-making tool to support the design of flexible products. Product flexibility is defined as the ability of a product to adapt in response to factors such as competitive market pressures, rapid technological change, and transient and multi-dimensional customer requirements. Specifically, this research is focused on investigating the fundamental principles and techniques for enhancing the flexibility of a product for future evolutionary changes, even if the precise form of those changes is not known a priori. Towards this goal, basic research is planned for establishing (1) a comprehensive metric and decision-making tool for objectively evaluating and comparing the flexibility of products, (2) fundamental principles and teachable guidelines for designing flexible product architectures, based in part on empirical studies of flexible products, and (3) a rigorous, stochastic decision analysis method to account for the difficulty of forecasting the value of a flexible product and to identify designs with appropriate levels of flexibility. The research will lead to improved methods for designing innovative, flexible products by (1) more effectively characterizing flexibility, (2) establishing fundamental principles and teachable methods for designing flexible product architectures, and (3) providing a framework for making design decisions involving flexibility in the face of uncertainty. When transferred to industry, this knowledge will help improve the quality and reduce the cost and time to market of products that are more sustainable and responsive to human needs and changing markets. To transfer the research from the laboratory to the classroom, product flexibility teaching modules with hands-on activities and in-depth examples will be created. The teaching modules will be launched in graduate and undergraduate courses at UT-Austin and the United States Air Force Academy. In a graduate course on product design and prototyping, students will apply the research results to design flexible assistive technologies for persons with physical and mental disabilities.