Concept Screening

The concepts arrived upon using the morphological chart are then screened against each other and against the customer needs. This is done as a preliminary decision matrix to see which concepts are going to be further analyzed.

 

  1 to 10 1 to 10 1 to 10 1 to 10
Concept Selection Concept 1  Concept 2 Concept 3 Concept 4
Capable of harvesting several types of vegetables   10 10 10 10
Does not require manmade power source   9 7 7 7
Uses less than $100.00 worth of material other than wood   8 7 7 8
Can be operated by one person   10 10 10 10
Capable of harvesting several rows of vegetable simultaneously   10 8 6 4
Does not damage crops   7 5 5 4
High Storage Capacity   8 5 7 3
Capable of sifting out excess dirt from vegetables   7 7 6 4
Simple shapes for ease of construction and replacing broken parts   5 7 7 8
Few moving parts to increase lifespan and ease of manufacturing   7 4 4 9
Resistant to environmental elements   8 8 8 8
Useful for other aspects of farming as well as vegetable collection   10 9 8 8
Pre-cools vegetables for storage   1 1 1 1
Separate storage containers for different types of vegetables   1 1 1 1
Total Points   101 89 87 85

 

     As a result of detailed analysis, concept one was chosen to be the most compatible with the farmer’s needs.  Also, model 1 supplied sufficient methods of the wants form the specification table. 

   This is one way of selecting a concept where no multiplying factors are used. However, another way includes the assignment of multiplying factors to the design criteria in accordance to each ones relative importance. Hence, different scores could have been obtained for the previous example, and a different concept may have been chosen.

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