The appearance of 3C (computer, communication, consumer electronic) electronic products has been considered as a critical attribute to attract consumers in the past decade. Moreover, 3C electronic enterprises with own brands are trying hard to meet the requirements such as user-friendly interface and eco-environmental materials for increasing the revenue and market share. Bamboo had been known as a flexible and green raw-material worldwide for many years. However, there are no bamboomade applications in any 3C electronic products due to its manufacturing process to achieve satisfactory specifications. The innovative manufacturing process of bamboo injection molding on the appearance of a 3C product suffered from a crucial quality issue, that is, bamboo deformation due to the difference between shrinkage of plastic and its inherent material characteristics. The concept is similar to IMR (in-mold decoration by roller) process. The objective of this article is to propose an innovative and robust bamboo injection molding process by using skills such as measurement system analysis, the Taguchi method, process capability index, and TRIZ. In this study, the detailed experimental process and satisfactory result are demonstrated and given. The exploited approach concerning bamboo is a valuable outcome and reference for further advanced implementations in electrical industry and others.

Numerous technological problems that arise during the development of innovative products must be overcome in a short period of time. The lack of methods of systematically inventive problem-solving may lead to repeated failures during innovation processes. Therefore, this study combined the workout and the Theory of Inventive Problem-Solving (TRIZ) approaches to resolve technological inventive problems encountered during the development of a novel bamboo-skin film applicable to in-mold injection molding. The goal of this study was to resolve three technological innovation problems using the following methods: (a) the restrictive brainstorming approach and a 39 × 39 contradiction matrix to resolve problems concerning the poor adhesion between bamboo-skin films and plastics; (b) the restrictive brainstorming approach and the 40 principles of invention (also referred to as 40 principles of TRIZ or 40 innovative principles) to overcome the problem regarding bamboo-skin breakage; and (c) the non-restrictive brainstorming approach to reduce the time required for post-processing. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is able to solve the innovative problems. The exploited approach concerning bamboo is a valuable outcome and reference for further advanced implementations in electrical industry and others.

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Tolerance design plays an important role in product development, which guarantees that the product appearance and function meet the product design specification. However, the existing tolerance analysis overlooks the process capacity of part suppliers, which results in variance of tolerance analysis between the designed product and the manufactured one. This study builds the supplier process capacity database with the production part approval process (PAPP), which is then introduced into the design phase for tolerance analysis. The results show the difference of tolerance analysis between conventional law of experience and supplier process capability database, and actual part dimensions are, respectively: (1) X axis: 601, 654, 640 DPPM; (2) Y axis: 964, 8290, 8535 DPPM; (3) Z axis: 29, 4798, 4557 DPPM. Further the study gives a detailed introduction to the construction method of the supplier process capacity database, which can provide reference for the product designers to improve the product design quality.