Applications of Axiomatic Design Theory in Design for Human Safety in Manufacturing Systems: A Literature Review

Design for Human Safety (DfHS) is an approach to integrate knowledge of human safety in the design process. DfHS is multi-disciplinary in its nature, requiring many kinds of information and knowledge. Number of DfHS studies tried to apply Axiomatic Design (AD) to achieve their aims. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on application of AD in DfHS in manufacturing systems and to propose a roadmap for future DfHS works. This paper examines the number and type of publications dealing with this context. The review covers papers published between 1990 (when AD was introduced first) and 2017. It is based on a range of combinations of the following keywords: “Axiomatic design” and “safety” or “accident” or “hazard” or risk”. This review has identified 15 research topics that were clustered into three main research groups: (1) application of AD in ergonomic design; (2) application of AD in human-computer interaction; and (3) application of AD in integrating safety systematically in design process. The authors also tried to identify which axiom of AD has been used in these researches.