Adaptable design quantificatio

Advanced design technologies and tools are needed to stay competitive in today's global marketplace. The systematic reuse of design information is a technique by which the producer of a product can reduce the uncertainty and cost of the product development process. The adaptable design paradigm aims to create products and designs that can be easily adapted to meet changing customer requirements. By extending the utility of a product through adaptation, the design efforts needed to produce successive product versions can be reduced. While the broad strokes of the adaptable design paradigm have been defined, further detailed study is required to bring it to a state in which it can be readily used by a designer. Quantifying adaptability is the next step in the further development of the adaptable design paradigm. This work presents the first efforts to objectively quantify the adaptability of product systems. By providing the designer with the ability to quantify adaptability, objective design decisions will be possible with respect to system adaptability. This thesis presents an adaptability quantification methodology. The adaptability quantification methods are applied to a case study to verify the results of the analysis. The quantification framework is then subjected to an analytical and numerical exploration to determine the properties of the model. This quantification framework is then used to quantify the increase in adaptability achieved through the application of the adaptable design methodology. This is achieved through the use of an adaptable vehicle case study. An adaptability quantification framework has been developed, and shown to provide consistent adaptability measures across various product systems while being simple to apply.