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Reducing Infant Mortality

Optimizing the design and assembly of a neonatal infant warmer.

Background

Improving global health outcomes for premature and low birth weight babies.

Nearly three-quarters of premature and low birth weight (LBW) infant deaths can be mitigated with proper education, planning, and care. Unfortunately, these resources are not equally available to people across the globe. Nearly 90% of early pre-term babies in high-income populations survive within the first few days, while this is true for only 10% of pre-term babies in low-income populations.

Since 2008, the Embrace Organization has chosen to address the “care” axis of this problem by introducing an innovative, low-cost infant warmer: the Embrace Care Unit. Normally, incubators are used to regulate the body temperature of newborns. However, these devices are very expensive and are often only available in more developed countries and more sophisticated medical facilities. By positioning the Embrace Care Unit as an alternative to the traditional incubator, the Embrace Organization is able to provide a similar, sufficient level of care to less developed geographies and less sophisticated medical facilities.

This small, light, and portable system requires no electricity to function and is powered only by AA batteries and boiling water. Boiling water is used to heat a Phase Change Material (PCM) that is responsible for storing and transferring heat through the bed to the infant.

Challenge

Achieving low-cost adoption and expanded production rates.

Despite the positive reception of the Embrace Care Unit, after being on the market for some time, they discovered that the price-point was still a significant barrier to product adoption. To reach more low-income families, there was an urgent need that the Embrace Care Unit be design-optimized to reduce the cost of the current model.

Embrace management also sought to increase production rates of the warmer by a significant percentage. Both of these goals had to be met while maintaining product quality and reliability. To achieve these goals, the Embrace team partnered with Stanford University’s project-based ME317 course (Design Methods) and enlisted my design team of four.

Approach

Design methodology and analysis tools.

In addition to leveraging our various team members’ experiences in project management, marketing, research, mechanical engineering, and manufacturing, we employed several design methodologies and analysis tools including:

  • Scenario Graph
  • Customer Value Chain Analysis (CVCA)
  • Value Graphing
  • Voice of Customer (VOC) / Affinity Diagramming
  • Function-Structure Mapping
  • Quality Function Deployment (QFD)
  • Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)

Due to time constraints, the scope of the course, and results from the cost-worth analysis, our team decided to focus on optimizing the design and assembly process of one specific component of the Embrace Care Unit. We saw that this particular subassembly had the highest opportunity for improvement in terms of manufacturing cost and time reduction.

Solution

Maximized efficiency with the right parts and process.

Within the selected component, we found Subassembly A to have the greatest opportunity for cost reduction. This made sense given its high cost, inefficient manufacturing methods and complex integration of electronics. Through the application of the above design methodologies, were able to identify several key opportunities for improving the cost of the entire unit through this particular subassembly, particularly with a change in part design and alternate assembly process.