Functional upgrading fundamental and performance upgrading priority ranking of adaptable-function products

Excellence in function and performance is one of the key reasons for a product to sustain its market competitiveness. Upgrading of products, including those of the adaptable-function products, is necessary to ensure their market attractiveness. Current research that is specifically on upgrading of adaptable-function products is lacking. To this end, this paper attempts to study both functional aspect and performance aspect of upgrade design of this kind of products. For the former, the study focuses on some fundamental issues of functional upgrading relevant to the upgrading type, where an analogy-based functional upgrading strategy is proposed. The proposed work is illustrated by the functional upgrading of an electric drill design case. For the latter, the study focuses on how to evaluate the upgrading priority, for which a number of performance attributes to be upgraded are specified. For this purpose, the technology potentials for enabling the upgrade design (which should be maximized) and the influence caused by the upgrading (which should be minimized) are first studied. Based on technology potentials and upgrading influence, the priority ranking is evaluated to help the designer making performance upgrading decisions. Finally, a case study of upgrading a multifunction machine tool is presented, which demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed evaluation method. With the help of the established upgrading design prototype and the strategy of upgrading priority ranking guidelines, the designers can get the relevant design support during their upgrade design process.