Article design of personalized devices—the tradeoff between individual value and personalization workload

TY - JOUR

T1 - Article design of personalized devices—the tradeoff between individual value and personalization workload

AU - Kuhl, Juliane

AU - Ding, Andreas

AU - Ngo, Ngoc Tuan

AU - Braschkat, Andres

AU - Fiehler, Jens

AU - Krause, Dieter

N1 - Funding Information: The research method for developing a method is explained in more detail in this section. The first part of the section explains the reasoning behind adapting and expanding upon an established method as a means of filling in the gap identified in the existing research, and how this is done. The next section explains the example product used for this paper, the flow diverter. The manufacturer of the flow diverters must consider whether personalization will be useful in preventing or reducing product complications during the handling of the implant and, if so, which attributes of the product should be personalized. In order to assist with the decision-making, the newly developed method was applied to the example of a flow diverter. The medical simulator HANNES (HANNES: Hamburg Anatomical Neurointerventional Simulator (see Section 2.3), development funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of project ELBE-NTM (031 L0068A)) was used to validate individualized flow diverter designs. As such, the last part of this section provides an introduction to the simulator. Funding Information: Funding: This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the BELUCCI project (grant number 13GW0274D) under the “Individualisierte Medizintechnik 2” program. We acknowledge support for the Open Access fees by Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) in the funding program Open Access Publishing. Publisher Copyright: © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Copyright: Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2020/12/29

Y1 - 2020/12/29

N2 - Personalized medical devices adapted to the anatomy of the individual promise greater treatment success for patients, thus increasing the individual value of the product. In order to cater to individual adaptations, however, medical device companies need to be able to handle a wide range of internal processes and components. These are here referred to collectively as the personalization workload. Consequently, support is required in order to evaluate how best to target product personalization. Since the approaches presented in the literature are not able to sufficiently meet this demand, this paper introduces a new method that can be used to define an appropriate variety level for a product family taking into account standardized, variant, and personalized attributes. The new method enables the identification and evaluation of personalizable attributes within an existing product family. The method is based on established steps and tools from the field of variant-oriented product design, and is applied using a flow diverter—an implant for the treatment of aneurysm diseases—as an example product. The personalization relevance and adaptation workload for the product characteristics that constitute the differentiating product properties were analyzed and compared in order to determine a tradeoff between customer value and personalization workload. This will consequently help companies to employ targeted, deliberate personalization when designing their product families by enabling them to factor variety-induced complexity and customer value into their thinking at an early stage, thus allowing them to critically evaluate a personalization project.

AB - Personalized medical devices adapted to the anatomy of the individual promise greater treatment success for patients, thus increasing the individual value of the product. In order to cater to individual adaptations, however, medical device companies need to be able to handle a wide range of internal processes and components. These are here referred to collectively as the personalization workload. Consequently, support is required in order to evaluate how best to target product personalization. Since the approaches presented in the literature are not able to sufficiently meet this demand, this paper introduces a new method that can be used to define an appropriate variety level for a product family taking into account standardized, variant, and personalized attributes. The new method enables the identification and evaluation of personalizable attributes within an existing product family. The method is based on established steps and tools from the field of variant-oriented product design, and is applied using a flow diverter—an implant for the treatment of aneurysm diseases—as an example product. The personalization relevance and adaptation workload for the product characteristics that constitute the differentiating product properties were analyzed and compared in order to determine a tradeoff between customer value and personalization workload. This will consequently help companies to employ targeted, deliberate personalization when designing their product families by enabling them to factor variety-induced complexity and customer value into their thinking at an early stage, thus allowing them to critically evaluate a personalization project.

KW - Adaptation workload

KW - Design method

KW - Flow diverter

KW - Individual value

KW - Medical device

KW - Personalized product

KW - Product development

KW - Product individualization

KW - Variety planning

KW - Variety-induced complexity

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85098619128&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.3390/app11010241

DO - 10.3390/app11010241

M3 - SCORING: Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85098619128

VL - 11

SP - 1

EP - 21

JO - APPL SCI-BASEL

JF - APPL SCI-BASEL

SN - 2076-3417

IS - 1

M1 - 241

ER -