Thesis (M.Eng.) - Asian Institute of Technology

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of Engineering, School of Advanced Technologies

The purpose of this thesis study was to propose an alternative product design and development process for agricultural machinery design in Thailand in order to improve the traditional process more efficiency. 16 people from 4 groups who design agricultural machines were interviewed. First group is the non-engineering group. Second group is the university researchers. Third group is the govermnent agencies and the last group is the large manufacturers. There are two main problems in which all groups are similar. The first problem is that designers always create a concept for a sub-function and the second problem is that there are too many prototypes after achieving a final prototype. The proposed agricultural machinery design is presented to solve these two problems. The creativity techniques are applied for assisting in concept generation and combination. The concept evaluation matrix is exploited regarding to select the appropriate concepts. This manner is presented for solving the first problem. CAD design, CAD assembly, and the computer simulation were employed to decrease the numbers of physical prototypes. The grass cutting machine of Sahayont Company was the case study for the proposed process. The analysis was about to compare the advantage and disadvantage of the propose design and development process with the traditional process.