Service-oriented design of microfludic devices

摘要

Microfluidics is a relatively new and, with an estimation of the market for thesedevices exceeding $ 3 billion in 2014, it is considered a profitable domain. Constantdevelopment of new technologies and growing demand for more versatile productscause increasing complexity in this area. To address this, the current trends for thedomain include automation, standardisation and customisation. At the same time,the society is moving from product types offering to services. Due to thecustomisation trend this transition appears beneficial for microfluidics. Takingadvantage of these opportunities, an investigation of microfluidic design has beenundertaken to address the issues at their origins.The literature review showed a lack of a general design methodology applicable forall microfluidic devices, identified existing approaches as technology driven and thedomain as unique in terms of design. Also, it highlighted a number of automationand standardisation attempts in the area. In addition, microfluidics shows limitedcustomer and service-orientation. Meanwhile, an investigation of complexity and itsimplications in microfluidics narrowed the study to sub-section interactions, whichallowed standardisation and automation without compromising customisation.In response to these gaps, an aim of the research is to develop a guideline for service-oriented design of microfluidic devices that can deal with sub-section interactions.This research reviews: existing methodologies for design in micro-scale, theirapplicability to the domain, microfluidic practitioners’ approach to design, state ofservice-thinking and services in the area and how sub-section interactions are dealtwith for these devices.The developed guideline and design enablers present a proposal for a general processfor the design of microfluidics. The solution attempts to tackle the issue of sub-section interactions and brings the domain one step towards an ‘experienceeconomy’ by incorporating service-considerations into the design process. Theusefulness of this contribution has been confirmed by a variety of methods andnumerous sources including experts in the field.