Method for upgrading a component within refurbishment

Abstract

One of the arguments against an increased use of repair is that, due to the constantly growing progress, an often already outdated component would be restored. However, refurbishment also allows a component to be modified in order to upgrade it to the state of the art or to adapt it to changed requirements. Many existing approaches regarding Design for Upgradeability are based on a modular product architecture. In these approaches, however, only the upgradeability of a product is considered through the exchange of components. Nevertheless, the exchange and improvement of individual component regions within a refurbishment has already been successfully carried out using additive processes. In this paper, a general method is presented to support the reengineering process, which is necessary to refurbish and upgrade a damaged component. In order to identify which areas can be replaced in the closed system of a component, the systematics of the modular product architecture are used. This allows dependencies between functions and component regions to be identified. Thus, it possible to determine which functions can be integrated into the intended component.