5 Service Design of Rehabilitative Exoskeleton for Sustainable …
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Fig. 5.6 QFD-based product and service design of rehabilitative exoskeleton
data archive service is proposed for value creation for both customers and the business. Exoskeleton can easily adapt to patients’ treatment needs based on training
profiles and schedule downloaded (with proper authority) from the cloud. Therefore,
patients can conveniently go to any nearby healthcare facility with an exoskeleton
for training, while healthcare facilities can attract more patients with the flexible and
efficient treatment with the exoskeleton. At same time, the business can benefit from
the improved utility of their exoskeletons.
Some end-of-life service options are also proposed. As the exoskeletons are expensive and technology-intensive products, the collection of retired devices or parts and
return to manufacturer is beneficial to intellectual property protection. The circulation of refurbished exoskeleton (or components) can help reduce manufacturing and
ownership costs, and consequently increase the customers’ access to exoskeleton
and exoskeleton-based treatments. Especially, it is technically feasible to reuse the
mechanical parts of the device, as they have much longer useful lifetime than the