Abstract
Product and process design have been examined from a multitude of perspectives: engineering, manufacturing, marketing, industrial design, as well as the integration of some or all of these perspectives. In turn, each perspective has led to approaches that are commonly known—design for manufacture (DFM), agile enterprise, concurrent engineering, value engineering, design for assembly (DFA), product data management (PDM), product life-cycle management (PLM), and many others. We propose a new perspective—design for control (DFC). DFC focuses on the carefully considered integration of new (or redesigned) parts/products into the control system structures that are used to plan and control the manufacture and assembly of products. We offer a formalization of DFC and the concept of “controllability” that facilitates development and maintenance of more efficient control systems.