Incorporating lifecycle costs into product architecture decisions

Abstract

The partitioning of a product into modules has a large impact on the design and manufacture of a product. It also has a large impact on lifecycle concerns such as repair and service. Previous work has developed product architecting rules using function structures to partition a product into modules. Straight application of these rules determines maximal modules. Often, however, subsets of these modules have varying failure rates, handling difficulties, and part costs. We develop here equations to incorporate these serviceability concerns into the architecting process. The service cost of any candidate module must incorporate part costs, labor costs, and failure rates. With this information, ..