Title: Functional reverse design for secondary innovation

Authors: Dunbing Tang; Yuyun Kang; Renmiao Zhu

Addresses: College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China. ' College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China. ' College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China

Abstract: Reverse engineering has been a common means to glean the design experience and knowledge attached to existing products, which can enable efficient product redesign. Traditionally reverse engineers focus on geometric reverse modelling which cannot capture the designer|s intention and may cause problems of intellectual property. As the most important creative design work is done at the conceptual design stage, it is essential for redesign of an existing artefact to understand its functional structure in order to consider the intention of the original design. In this research, it is proposed that the current reverse engineering shall be extended to the functional modelling phase, and a functional reverse design method for secondary innovation is presented to overcome the shortcoming of geometric reverse engineering. The methodology of functional reverse design is conducted through two sequential steps: functional reverse engineering and functional reengineering. Functional reverse engineering is to reproduce the original function structure of the existing product through structure-to-function mapping, and functional reengineering is to improve or update the mapped original function model for secondary innovation. A case study is given to illustrate the proposed functional reverse design method.

Keywords: reverse engineering; functional modelling; design process; secondary innovation; conceptual design; product structure; functional reverse design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPLM.2011.043187

International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management, 2011 Vol.5 No.2/3/4, pp.183 - 201

Published online: 26 Mar 2015 *

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