Product Design And Evaluation Technology Based On QFD And Ergonomics

In general, identification of customer needs is the first and the most important step in the development of any product. Reliable and comprehensive user needs is crucial for developing usable products as well as fundamental to market success. How to satisfy user needs, there are two fold characters should be done. First, how to transform most of the user needs to design attributes. Second, how to transform the design attribute to manufacture documents.Based on the knowledge above, this thesis developed a multidisciplinary design approach for integrating ergonomics and engineering design technology (QFD). A modified HoQ (House of Quality) matrix adapted from QFD was proposed and utilized to systematically identify the critical ergonomic design elements corresponding to users' functional requirements as well as affective needs. A case study of electric drill design was conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed design methodology. In order to verify the research hypothesis following efforts are performed:1. Elicit comprehensive user needs and expectation related to user satisfaction by extensive ergonomics knowledge. Identify user needs and expectations related to user satisfaction and prioritize them by questionnaire and statistical analysis.2. Assess the design priority of product attributes of the electric hand tool by correlating weighted user needs with product design attributes. Finally, identify the important ergonomic design elements of electric hand tool regarding to user satisfaction.3. Based on the character of electric hand tool, an ergonomics experiment was conducted to analyze the hand force distribute and the sEMG signal. Concluded the influence of grab diameter on FSRs, which was prepared for the ergonomics experiment on electric drill operating.4. Evaluate the design attributes of electric hand tools on ergonomic effectiveness in terms of biomechanical, physiological, and psychophysical aspects of user with two experiments. Assess qualitatively the impacts of design attributes of electric hand tool on users' subjective preference or expectation.5. Develop an integrated design priority evaluation method by incorporating objective performance measures with subjective evaluation measures so as to identify the overall priority of design alternatives of an electric hand tool.