Palani Rajan.P.K., Van Wie, M., Matthew I. Campbell, Otto, K. & Wood, K.
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712
mc1@mail.utexas.edu
Product flexibility can be defined as the degree of responsiveness (or adaptability) for any future change in a product design. Making a design more flexible leads to a reduction in redesign cost. Product flexibility plays a significant role in responding faster to customer feedbacks by allowing quicker updates in the products and achieving higher levels of performance in a short span of time. Despite this importance, flexibility definition and measurement in practice remains a difficult task. When considering the efforts taken in the past, to understand and measure product flexibility, few metrics have been developed. Such measures are based on time or cost required to redesign. In comparison of Flexible manufacturing systems in Japan and US, Jaikumar uses the number of new parts introduced per year as one of the measures of product flexibility. These measures were developed keeping manufacturing as the main focus rather than the product itself. This paper presents an alternative understanding of product flexibility from a design perspective. Using an empirical study foundation, the main objectives of this research is to develop a method to evaluate flexibility of product design, and derive a set of guidelines to guide product architecture to a desired state of flexibility.