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AbstractThis study proposes an alternative technique to support the design and development of products, specifically focusing on creating a new design and platform for restaurants tailored to the needs of senior adults, ensuring easy-to-access experiences. The primary aim is to effectively identify and translate customer requirements into an engineering design through a systematic approach, enabling the extraction and realization of these requirements. The background encompasses insights gathered from interviews with target customers, informing the creation of a new design. Acknowledging that prior designs often stem from the designers’ perspectives, the study highlights the importance of aligning with and meeting specific customer requirements. Research findings demonstrate the popularity of the nature-style restaurant concept in various regions of Thailand, particularly among senior adults aged 61-70 in the Bangkok metropolitan region. Many of these individuals have backgrounds in medical fields or were retired government officers/employees. The study utilized a digital-based questionnaire platform to gather demographic information, financial insights, and perspectives of senior adults. Ultimately, the research contributes significantly to enhancing the conceptual model of the restaurant, identifying key components crucial for meeting the unique needs of senior adults.

This paper provides a detailed guide for Product Design and Development (PDD) of everyday essentials, with a focus on improving user accessibility. It applies Quality Function Deployment (QFD) principles to enhance user experiences by aligning design with customer requirements. Different customer types and their perceptions of everyday essential items are considered, with QFD used as a systematic approach to translate these needs into specific product characteristics, ensuring alignment with user expectations. The paper presents a step-by-step application of QFD on everyday essential design, highlighting key considerations and best practices. A case study on a drying and ironing device demonstrates how this approach encourages innovation and user-centric product design. The study focuses on metropolitan areas around Bangkok, Thailand, with customers aged 18 to 50, emphasizing design for limited spaces and addressing needs related to the rainy season or washing clothes at night. Results show no bad smell caused by bacteria. The key findings guide designers and developers to create products that prioritize user needs and preferences, enhancing overall usability and satisfaction. The contributions of this research benefit designers (manufacturers), customers, and researchers. The implications of this research include minimizing time spent on trial-and-error in the design stage, optimizing and reducing waste from the prototyping process. However, there is still a risk of distortion and loss in translating customers’ needs, highlighting the importance of receiving feedback after product use.

AbstractManufacturers are continuously designing health-related products with various styles and specific characteristics to challenge and outcompete each other. However, it is challenging to convince consumers that a new product’s attributes are better than similar existing products. The main challenge for manufacturers is how to create a product that improves on existing products. This research aims to analyze whether customers' purchasing decisions are aligned with the product’s applicable mechanical characteristics and to develop guidelines for supporting product design and development. The design team can use these guidelines to quickly and easily understand and support customer requirements. The study uses “famous types of heel inserts” as a case study, with quality function deployment, usefulness of product, factor analysis, ergonomics, reverse engineering, and finite element analysis as the key tools. The results can help users select the right health-related product and make small adjustments to their routines to improve their quality of life.

Water is a vital resource that should be utilized effectively. However, it is overused and squandered on a daily need, including the unrestrained use of water for ablution purposes. This condition can be due to a lack of awareness and the influences of peer cultural values. Therefore, the aim of this study is to develop a water-tap design that takes into consideration the influences of cultural value. Accordingly, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling (SEM) approach the significant correlation between cultural influences and user preferences on water-tap design by referring at the critical threshold output of each attribute. The result showed that collectivism and uncertainty avoidance dimensions were identified as the influencing cultural dimensions and the automatic water level-control float valve, mechanical water-taps with auto-stop function, and transparent water tanks are the most important considerations for water tap technical specification. Through the assessment of its applicability, the use of the prototype can reduce water usage by 54.6% compared to regular water-taps. Correspondingly, the approach of cultural value in the designing process is expected to give more insights to practices such as product designers when determining design specification while for knowledge, it extends the applicability of Hofstede cultural theory for product design and development.

The use of plastic bottles has become a significant environmental concern, and recycling them has become a priority. Small and medium-sized recycling companies must collect and categorize large volumes of plastic bottles and sell them to larger recycling firms, a process that is time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive. This manual sorting process can pose health risks, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and can affect worker productivity. To address these issues, this study proposes the development of an automated conveyor belt system that can rapidly and accurately separate plastic bottles by type. The system utilizes an opaque and transparent plastic bottle separation platform, which saves time, cost, and manpower. This system design provides recycling SMEs with a competitive advantage by serving as a practical application model and a prototype with an easy-to-use concept. Key tools employed in this research include product design development (PDD), Kansei engineering, manufacturing process design, controlling system, and fault tree analysis (FTA). The light sensors are critical components in the separation process, detecting the opacity or transparency of the bottles’ surfaces. The proposed prototype’s reliability will be assessed by FTA, which considers all potential failures. This study contributes to the body of knowledge surrounding the integration of conveyor systems and provides valuable information for businesses seeking to optimize their sorting processes. The guidelines developed in this study can serve as a starting point for further research on the integration of conveyors in waste sorting plants.

Diabetes Mellitus incidence and its negative outcomes have dramatically increased worldwide and are expected to further increase in the future due to a combination of environmental and social factors. Several methods of measuring glucose concentration in various body compartments have been described in the literature over the years. Continuous advances in technology open the road to novel measuring methods and innovative measurement sites. The aim of this comprehensive review is to report all the methods and products for non-invasive glucose measurement described in the literature over the past five years that have been tested on both human subjects/samples and tissue models. A literature review was performed in the MDPI database, with 243 articles reviewed and 124 included in a narrative summary. Different comparisons of techniques focused on the mechanism of action, measurement site, and machine learning application, outlining the main advantages and disadvantages described/expected so far. This review represents a comprehensive guide for clinicians and industrial designers to sum the most recent results in non-invasive glucose sensing techniques’ research and production to aid the progress in this promising field.

Innovations are essential for global development and market dynamics. Innovation management is central to organizations for gaining adaptability and dynamic capabilities to ensure their sustainability over time. Right decisions are essential for the implementation of innovations. However, on many occasions, especially in the product development process, decisions are taken based on static analysis, qualitative criteria, questionnaires, and/or quantitative evaluations that are outdated. Moreover, many innovation developments do not consider the existing databases in their information systems of similar innovation projects, especially in the early phases of new innovations when evaluations are mainly driven by area, group, or person. Furthermore, inventions are introduced in different regions, plants, and socio-economic situations, providing different results. In this context, considering that innovations shape our current and future world, including all products and services, as well as how humans, organizations, and machines interact, the significance of the paper is clear. Therefore, it is necessary to develop an innovation management model based on the Viable System Model to cope with any potential future environment based on internal organizational capabilities. For this purpose, the paper designs a Digital Ecosystem for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (DE4.0) based on the Plan-Do-Check-Act methodology applicable to any information system consisting of a digital twin, a simulation model, databases from existing information systems, and quality management techniques. This DE4.0 provides a huge advantage for the applicability and scalability of innovations as it allows one to plan, monitor, assess, and improve. Moreover, based on the conceptual model, a generic project evaluation scheme is developed, providing a platform for innovation project management and control during the whole innovation life cycle. As a result, the research provides a scientific and practical contribution for an integrated management of innovations based on the best information and set of techniques available. Based on this framework, a supply-chain case study is developed. The results show how, depending on the intended goals, the past experiences, the evolution of the innovation, and the innovation scope, indicators can be influenced towards reaching the initial goals and reducing the innovation risks. Finally, a discussion about the potential use and role of the DE4.0 for innovation projects and the related learning process is performed.

For precise fertilization of blueberry plants, it is technologically the easiest and most suitable option to use a volumetric filling, for which it can be presumed that it is possible to precisely dose the fertilizer for each plant by grams. For setting up a volumetric filler, it is necessary to know parameters such as the size of the fertilizer particles and their bulk density. The aim of this research is to determine the granulometric parameters and their effect, which is done by measuring up three different fertilizers (SQM Qrop K, Memon Siforga, Substral): width, height, and length of 100 randomly selected fertilizer particles as well as the volumes and weights of 100 particles in 10 repetitions. According to the measurements, the average diameters of fertilizer particles were found as well as the average mass, volumes, and bulk density. A Mahr Digital Caliper 16EWRi 0–150 mm was used to measure the diameters of the fertilizer granules. A Yxlon FF35 computer tomograph was used to accurately scan particles. The analytical scale, Kern ABJ 220-4NM, was used to determine mass. The volumes were measured, using measuring glasses, with one having a maximum volume of 10 mL in 0.2 mL increments and another having a maximum volume of 100 mL in 1 mL increments. Descriptive statistics analysis was performed in Microsoft Excel. It turned out that the average diameters (3.68 vs. 3.64 vs. 4.29 mm) and bulk densities (0.928 vs. 0.631 vs. 0.824 g cm−3) of the three fertilizers differed far from each other, meaning that the given volume could be filled with different amounts of fertilizer. Equations between mass and weight were formed according to the measurements. As a result, it was found that a volumetric filler can be used for fertilizing blueberry plants precisely, but it demands adjusting the filler each time in the situation, which is defined by the variety of blueberry plants: their age, size, and health.

Off-the-shelf orthoses used in rehabilitation medicine present challenges in the lack of individual comfort offered and in the support of the different motor conditions of the affected individuals. Although custom-made orthoses address these issues, their current fabrication method consists of a laborious and material wasteful process performed by skilled orthotists. Combining 3D scanning, 3D modelling and 3D printing, this paper proposes and assesses a method for the fabrication of custom-made products for rehabilitation medicine. In collaboration with CMRA, a Hospital dedicated to rehabilitation, the method is applied to the design of a customised knee positioning orthosis for a patient with cerebral palsy. This project is exploratory on the capabilities of the use of 3D printing in patient specific customisation of orthoses. Having developed, prototyped and tested four different concepts with the patient, from which one was successfully accepted, it is possible to demonstrate the potential of industrialisation of these technologies.

The 4th industrial revolution (IR) requires new products and business models adjusted to the rapidly changing market conditions, which calls for evolutions in design engineering. In this context, smart design engineering is here defined as a methodology used during the analysis and design of a product or a system, which can be composed by hardware, software and/or services, and that explicitly considers exploiting the technologies and opportunities from the 4th IR. This work contributes to both design theory and practice: (i) it deepens the understanding about the necessary smart design engineering features and shows how these features impact the product design and development process’s (PDDP) key dimensions (procedures, people and tools); (ii) it maps the features’ impact on PDDP’s phases, thus providing practical direction for process improvement. To accomplish these results, a survey was performed on the initial features presented in the literature, which helped to identify new features and to confirm their relation to the 4th IR and their impact on the PDDP. These features were then analyzed against the 4th IR environment perspectives and core technologies, which led to understanding how they can be used to improve the PDDP.

New product development (NPD) is essential for large, as well as small and medium, enterprises (SMEs). Despite its importance for the economy, challenges remain in the NPD in SMEs. Product success is related with the NPD process, so it is important for SMEs to be able to design their NPD process. This paper aims to identify SME’s NPD research topics, the characteristics of the NPD process in SMEs, and important aspects to be considered for NPD process design. The literature review is done with the analysis of 99 selected academic articles from Scopus and ScienceDirect. Content analysis, bibliographic analysis, and clustering method (based on Pearson’s correlation coefficient) are used to conduct the identification. Less-formal processes, informal strategic planning, limited resources, need technology support, and lack of capabilities in certain fields are some of the characteristics of SME’s NPD. Collaborative product development, competitive advantage, information and communication technology (ICT), concurrent engineering, quality function deployment, and continuous improvement are important keywords based on previous research in SME’s NPD. Design activities in NPD, collaboration and source of innovation, and process modelling, tools, and techniques appear to be important aspects related with the SME’s NPD process.

This paper demonstrates a preliminary investigation of geometry, function and its relation to DFX principles, namely DFM (Design for Manufacturing). This is the starting point for research on the development of an expert system that assesses design goals along DFX principles in a feature-based CAD environment. There is a need for a deeper level of understanding of the relationship between geometry and its effects on function, in order to correct and improve the product concept before large amounts of resources are invested in the product’s development. This paper is a preliminary investigation into geometry and function involving DFM as part of an early stage of research into geometric effects on function and DFX through the use of CAD/CAE/CAM.In this paper, a concept is chosen to develop a parametric solid model that will be used to investigate a set of defined function attributes using model variants, which are evaluated in terms of the defined function attributes and DFM. The investigation found that for the functions defined, geometric parameters had less of an effect than expected. This is mainly due to the fact that the defined function attributes under investigation were associated with material properties. This paper demonstrates a preliminary investigation at the early stage of research to develop a more detailed relationship structure between geometry and functional attributes and their relationship with DFX. The end goal is to develop an integrated methodology involving geometry, function and DFX principles through the use of CAD/CAE/CAM .