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General Adaptable Product Design

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Global Product Development

Abstract

Adaptable design is a new design approach for developing adaptable products to satisfy various requirements of customers. Since the adaptable design method can be used to replace multiple products with different functions with a single adaptable product, this method can reduce the costs to achieve the required functions, thereby improving the competitiveness of products. In addition, due to the decreased number of products, the waste created at the end of the product’s life cycle is also reduced, thereby decreasing the impact on the environment. This paper examines the nature and characteristics of the adaptable design method by comparing it with existing design methodologies. This paper also provides details on the basic elements in adaptable design, including rationalized functions, modular adaptable architecture, adaptable interfaces, and adaptability. Research and industrial applications are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed adaptable design method.

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Acknowledgments

Financial support was jointly provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada to P.H. Gu and D.Y. Xue, by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (No: 58351503101000001) and the Key Technologies R&D Program of Guangdong Province, China (No: 2009A080202010) to P.H. Gu (PI) and by Ministry of Science and Technology through 863 Program to Y.L. Chen (No: 2006AA04Z107).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

    P. Gu & D. Xue

  2. Department of Mechatronic Engineering, Shantou University, Shantou, China

    P. Gu

  3. School of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

    Y. Chen

Authors
  1. P. Gu
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  2. D. Xue
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  3. Y. Chen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to P. Gu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , IRCCyN UMR CNRS 6597, Ecole Centrale de Nantes, rue de la Noë 1, Nantes Cedex 3, 44321, France

    Alain Bernard

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Gu, P., Xue, D., Chen, Y. (2011). General Adaptable Product Design. In: Bernard, A. (eds) Global Product Development. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15973-2_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15973-2_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-15972-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-15973-2

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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