Design for reconfiguration as fundamental aspect of smart products

Abstract

Fundamental changes of traditional products towards intelligent, connected Smart Product Service Systems require radical adaption and enhancement of traditional product design approaches. Our previous works determined the tremendous reconfiguration potential of Smart Products during their use phase. Here, the provision of suitable methods and IT tools for the management and synchronization of the virtual product models and physical lifecycle data was identified as a core challenge. As an approach, we introduced a methodology for the systematization of virtual product models and physical lifecycle data for the context-specific reconfiguration of Smart Products during their use phase. This contribution analyzes the required extension of this methodological approach into the Smart Product design phase, where the design of generic reconfiguration variants can be considered as triggering elements for the generation of context-specific reconfiguration options offers. It was implemented prototypically by considering a context-specific reconfiguration approach allowing temporary reconfigurations of Smart Products during their use phase.