Design of a Hand Rehabilitation Device Using integrated Axiomatic and Benchmarking Methods

Abstract

The diversity of users and market requires that product must be developed based on the customer need. It is a challenge for designers to fully understand the customer need in the product development. Traditional methods of the product development rely on designers’ experience. It is difficulty to generate a consistent design solution by different designers. This paper introduces an integrated approach of axiomatic design and benchmarking methods for product development based on diverse needs. The axiomatic principle is applied to map customer needs into product function requirements. The benchmarking method is used to search product specifications to meet the product function requirements. A hand rehabilitation device is developed using the proposed method. The solution shows effectiveness of the proposed method.