Advance intervention of recessive ill-conditioned feature: the early-stage design method based on system recessive inheritance

In the fusion design process of the system, ill-conditioned features, that are not explicit in previous generation systems, may exhibit to negate the operation of the new-generation system. This type of ill-conditioned feature is termed as the recessive ill-conditioned feature (R-ICF) of the system. It is believed that R-ICF in the fusion design process is attributed to the complex system recessive inheritance mechanism (C-RIM), which is analogical to organism recessive inheritance. In-depth study of the characteristics of C-RIM, it is found that one of the reasons leading to R-ICF is the recessive couplings between parameters of the previous generation of systems. This article proposes screening methods for recessive couplings and preliminary methods to intervene R-ICF. An auxiliary software is developed to facilitate implementation of the currently proposed methods. In order to reduce the number of design iterations due to R-ICF, thus to improve efficiency for the fusion innovation process, this article further proposes a system fusion innovation design process model based on C-RIM. Through this process model, R-ICF incurred by recessive couplings can be detected and resolved in advance at the early-stage of product design. The applicability of the currently proposed process model is demonstrated by design exemplification with an irregular workpiece transport system. Abbreviation: A, Act; C-RIM, complex system recessive inheritance mechanism; Ai,i=1,2,3… Act; DCC, design-centric complexity; EO, Execution object; EOi,i=1,2,3… Execution object; Fi,i=1,2,3… Function; N, Noun; PSS, Product service systems; R-ICF, Recessive ill-conditioned feature; TRIZ, theory of inventive problem solving; R-ICF-n-m R-ICF with n(n ≥ 3) affected function incurred by parameters from m (m ≥ 3) source systems; T, Target; Ti,i=1,2,3… Target; V, Verb