Optimisation of product form design using fuzzy integral-based Taguchi method

ABSTRACT

The trend of industrial product design is changing towards consumer-centered. Affective responses that concern consumers’ affective needs have been recognised as invaluable in industrial product form design and have received increasing attention. To design a product form that appeals to consumers, designers should consider multiple affective responses (MARs). This paper proposes a robust design approach that uses a fuzzy integral-based Taguchi method to obtain the optimal product form design related to MARs. Design analysis is first used to identify design variables and MARs. According to the results, a Taguchi experiment is conducted and the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios are computed. A multiperformance characteristic index (MPCI) is then defined based on the fuzzy integral value (FIV), and thus, the S/N ratios are converted into a single performance index. According to the FIV, the effects of design variables are identified through analysis of variance (ANOVA), and the response table and response graph are derived. Consequently, the optimal form design is obtained. A car profile design experiment is conducted to illustrate the proposed approach. The result shows that this approach can effectively enhance consumers’ affective response qualities, and be used as a universal robust design approach for optimising product form design.

KEYWORDS:

• Product form design
• robust design
• Taguchi method
• decision making
• fuzzy integral

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their sincere thanks to the participants for their cooperation and assistance in the experiment. The authors would also like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and advice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Yongfeng Li http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5909-7546

Liping Zhu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4113-4748

Additional information

Funding

This research is supported by the MOE (Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences [Project number 14YJCZH084].