Das Wirkraummodell - Ein Hilfsmittel bei der Gestaltung sauberkeitsrelevanter Produkte

摘要

The need for cleanliness relevant products does not only affect products of the food industry but also in other areas such as medical products and has seen immense growth in recent years. The consequences of disregarding cleanliness requirements are different: in the food industry they affect the machine operator by an increased cleaning effort, on the one hand, and on the other hand, they affect food consumers by an increased risk of contamination. Previous tools for the development of cleanliness relevant products focus on design details and are based on empirical knowledge of experts with regard to special assemblies. Most development tools are design examples and primary aim on assisting during the optimisation of already designed components. Promising approaches to extend the support for designing cleanliness relevant products are product models that represent embodiment-function relationships of a product, such as the Contact&Channel-approach. The goal of this article is to present the newly developed Working Space Model which extends the possibilities during the development of cleanliness relevant products. Developers do no longer have to rely exclusively on design examples but rather can use design principles to eliminate cleanliness-related design weaknesses. The Working Space Model is considered as an addition to existing and established approaches, such as the FMEA or fault tree analysis. It supports designers to discover missing functions, such as missing seals that lead to leakage. This support is based on linking graphical design elements with function-relevant information, e.g. from the function structure. The potentials of the Working Space Model are discussed using the example of the development of a new, innovative chocolate casting machine.