Conceptual Design and Selection of Natural Fibre Reinforced Biopolymer Composite (NFBC) Takeout Food Container

Abstract

Biopolymer composite has gained huge attention for its beneficial properties such as biodegradable and less impact to the environment. This consequently would diminish the dependency on the petroleum-based polymer. Abundance of studies have been done on the development and characterization of biopolymer composite materials for food packaging application, but work on the conceptual design of biopolymer composite packaging product is hardly found. Using the Kano Model, Quality Function Deployment for Environment (QFDE), morphological map, and Analytic Hierarchy Method (AHP) framework combination, this paper presents the conceptual design of a natural fibre reinforced biopolymer composites take-out food container. To understand customer satisfaction with the current use of takeout food containers, the Kano model was applied, and the findings were integrated into QFDE. The highest weight of voices of customer and environment (VOCE) as the solution parameters for the design characteristics were later refined using the aid of morphological chart (MC) to systematically develop conceptual designs. Lastly, AHP was utilized to pick the final concept design. The concept design with the highest score (8.3%) was chosen as the final conceptual design.