Abstract
Conventional products tend to be thrown away because of functional obsoleteness before reaching the end of physical life of the products. This is one of the main causes of the mass disposal problem. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a design methodology for upgradable products. Especially, this paper discusses a method dealing with uncertainty of long-term planning in the design methodology. The proposed method deals with uncertainty as ranges of parameter values, and derives a design solution that realizes required upgrades, while adapting to estimated uncertainty. This method makes a design object robust and tolerant against the uncertainty and, therefore, makes design for upgradability more feasible.
