Designing Systems with Adaptability in Mind

Abstract

Designing a complex cyber-physical or manufactured system requires a significant amount of effort. A good design needs to be adaptable to requirement changes, however should also avoid unbounded margins that can be costly. Achieving this fine balance is difficult. This paper presents a design process that takes adaptability into consideration. By exploring the missions a system can support within a specified limit of additional engineering costs, we are able to characterize this system’s adaptability. Such a characterization inherits the original meaning of adaptability in ecosystems that describes a system’s ability of maintaining the original goals even when facing ongoing changes, and allows it be computable in industry. A new design process for a product family is then established to identify designs that support the most missions while controlling costs. An HVAC example is used to illustrate such a design process that helps maximize mission performance and reduce costs.

This research was partially developed with funding from The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)/The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this article/presentation are those of the author(s)/presenter(s) and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government. Distribution Statement “A” (Approved for Public Release, Distribution Unlimited).

The original version of this chapter was revised: The spelling of the author’s name was corrected. The erratum to this chapter is available at DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26109-6_40

An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26109-6_40