On Flexibility in System Design

摘要

This paper explores the concept of flexibility in system design. Embedding flexibility in systems has become increasingly important in recent years due to the rapidly changing markets that the systems are designed to serve, their fast-evolving technology base, and the progressively longer operational lifetimes. The concepts discussed herein are intended to persuade system designers to explicitly consider issues of flexibility early in the design process.rnFlexibility is discussed in the context of two products of design: physical systems (e.g., spacecraft) and information systems (e.g., cockpit decision process). Separate frameworks are used to analyze each type of system, based upon distinct research directions.