Despite many uncertainties, industrial fields such as energy (eg, oil rigs), utilities infrastructure (eg, telecommunications), space systems, transportation systems, construction, and manufacturing make large and mostly irreversible investments in systems with potentially long life cycles. The life cycle value of such systems may be increased significantly by designing in the flexibility to make future changes. This paper presents a systematic methodology for designers to identify flexible design opportunities (FDOs) more comprehensively and earlier in the system design process. The methodology guides designers to generate flexible design concepts that can be assessed, selected, and integrated into a design during an early stage of the design process. We demonstrate and validate the FDO methodology on a case in the offshore drilling industry.

中文翻译：

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确定大型系统中灵活设计机会的方法

尽管存在许多不确定性，但能源（例如石油钻机），公用事业基础设施（例如电信），航天系统，运输系统，建筑和制造业等工业领域对使用寿命可能较长的系统进行了大量且几乎不可逆的投资。通过设计灵活性以进行将来的更改，可以显着提高此类系统的生命周期价值。本文提出了一种系统的方法，供设计师识别灵活的设计机会（FDO），并且在系统设计过程中更早。该方法论指导设计人员生成灵活的设计概念，这些概念可以在设计过程的早期阶段进行评估，选择和集成到设计中。我们在海上钻井行业的案例中演示并验证FDO方法。