QFD Based Methodology to Decide upon Contextually Appropriate Solution Category with Specific Reference to Pineapple Peeling Equipment Design

Framing product design specifications is an important part of design process. The decisions taken at this stage affect all the downstream phases, right from conceptualization, embodiment and prototyping to manufacturing and dissemination. In engineering design, to determine priorities of different engineering specifications of product, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method is used. Similar approach was used for deciding upon some design specifications as well. The present study elaborates on a QFD based methodology which helped in deciding an important specification, in the context of pineapple peeling equipment design. Here, a pineapple peeling solution was to be designed for small fruit processing units. During study of the existing solutions, it was found that there were broadly four categories of solutions and final solution was likely to belong to one of them. Hence, specifying the appropriate solution category, prior to conceptualization, was thought to be reducing both, time and effort. The paper, based in this backdrop, presents a QFD based approach used for the peeling equipment design. At first, priority of different user requirement was determined. Then, the relation between these requirements and different solution categories was established. These inputs were, then, put through QFD based process that generated scores indicating an order of appropriateness of solution categories to meet larger users’ priorities. The order of appropriateness, obtained through the methodology, was evaluated through users’ responses. Through this case study, the paper attempts to show proof of concept of the adopted methodology supporting adoption of similar approach for design of other fruit processing equipment also advocates adoption of specific design methods in new design contexts.