Device Application of Classifying Schemes

Leisure and recreation are vital for people's physical and mental health. "Evidence indicates that what an individual does during leisure time significantly affects illness, disease, and even longevity" (Wankel). Primary and secondary students with disabilities need recreational opportunities and skills as part of their educational development so they can carry skills into adulthood and into life in their communities (Auxter et al.). This general need leads to the mission statement "to design a device and/or process that will enhance the recreational activities of students with severe mental and physical disabilities."

After initial clarification and high-level customer interviews at Rosedale School in the Austin, TX Independent School District (Faulkner et al.), the mission statement is refined to "the design of a product that would enhance tee ball for the students, while maintaining their integration in the community." The primary market for the device is educational institutions as an assistive technology. Initial business case analysis demands that the product cost less than $100 as a one-off device produced by the institutions.

Customer needs analysis (10 customers) for this application gives the results shown in Table 10.5. The final product must adapt for changing skill levels for educational development, and it must guide the bat to consistently hit the ball, providing the primary function for integrating the students into community activities. Beyond these "musts," critical needs for a successful product include the ability of a user to adjust the height of the ball for persons in wheelchairs and persons of various sizes, ensure that the student uses the device independently (not hand-over-hand), provide auditory stimulation for cause-effect learning, and reduce the product size for storage and transportation (separation of function in time and space). It must also be "easy to build/duplicate," since the institutions will be fabricating the device themselves.

Through the specification of a process description and task listing of these customer needs, the refined function structure is shown in Figure 10.11. The system boundary for this functional analysis includes only the operational-phase tee ball. Notice in the function structure the convergence of both an external energy source and the human energy from the user. These energy flows, in addition to guidance functions, provide the primary means of satisfying the operational needs of students with disabilities.

A House of Quality for the "Batter Up!" includes measurements of the volume, mass, and number of parts. In addition, the length of bat grips, operating noise, range of bat height, range of handle movement, and range of bat speeds provide a quantified specification of the functions in Figure 10.11(b).

This specification leads to concept generation of a tee ball assistive technology. Table 10.6 shows a partial analysis matrix of the main functions in the function structure. Because of the critical customer needs of adjustability, hitting the ball consistently, and user independence, the energy flow in the Batter Up! function structure passes through primary functions. Thus, solution principles are listed by directed search, according to energy domain. A wide variety of mechanical and electromechanical solutions are shown for the application, especially for the external energy source. These solution principles lead to a number of concept variants.

Figure 10.12 illustrates the selected concept. This concept, based on a pneumatic energy source and a guide wire, was produced from basic hardware supplies to satisfy the fabrication requirements of wood shops in secondary-school systems. The pneumatic air is supplied by a portable air tank, where the air flows through the bat and exits near the end during an assisted swing. A support person provides timing of the air shot to power the swing. After prototype testing, this successful concept was installed into a local school district as a regular recreational activity.

Summary

A procedure for executing directed search with classifying schemes may be listed as follows:

1. Model the primary functions or subsets of functions of a product as black boxes, with material, energy, or signal flows.

2. For these black boxes, choose the classification schemes that closely relate to the functions and customer needs (Table 10.4).

3. For one of the classification headings, generate solutions to the function(s).

4. Document the results in a matrix, where the rows are functions and the columns are solutions, organized by classification headings.

5. After ideas are exhausted for a given heading, repeat the process for the next heading.

As stated for direct search with physical principles, this procedure may be applied to any of the function combinations from the product functional model. Intuitive choices are the primary functions of the product as weighted by the customer needs and the function chains that form potential modules of the product (Chapter 9).

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 837