A System Dynamics and Scenarios Framework for Architecting Product Design Goals for Changeability

Abstract

The design of changeable product architecture requires modeling the dynamic interaction between products and the sociotechnical sphere, in order to understand where changeability is needed. For example, a government approval of airport expansions will impact airline operations, and the design priorities of new airliners. The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to determine design goals for a new product architecture in system of systems (SoS). These goals become dynamic, once linked to their underlying societal changes. The characteristic of the approach is to integrate system dynamics (SD) and scenario planning; thus, SD captures quantitative aspects of societal and product function dynamics, while scenarios provide a narrative explicating parameter choices, assumptions, and implications. In this paper, SD models include business and societal aspects to evaluate long-term profitability. Goal prioritization for a new product is obtained in the form of importance weights via global sensitivity analysis; these weights are highly dependent on external functions and risk attitude, and vary in time. A toy case study deals with modeling the household freezer's past evolution in an SoS to find evolving design priorities. The result is a positive evaluation of the method, using a recent Design for Changeability framework.