Application of house of quality in the conceptual design of batik wax extruder and printer

Malaysian batik production is dominated by two techniques known as hand-drawn batik or batik tjanting, and stamp batik, or batik block. In comparison to batik block, the more popular batik tjanting takes a longer time to produce. A Standardized Nordic Questionnaire (SNQ) for musculoskeletal symptom examination involving batik artisans in Kelantan and Terengganu identified high rates of musculoskeletal disorders in respondents due to their working posture during the batik tjanting process. It was also observed that the number of workers and artisans willing to participate in the traditional batik industry is on the decline. These problems have led to a systematic Quality Functional Deployment approach to facilitate the decision-making process for the conceptual design of an automatic batik printer. In this study, house of quality (HOQ) was applied to identify the critical features for a batik printer based on the voice of the customer (VOC). A survey was done to rate the importance of VOC using an 8-point Likert scale revealed that the batik practitioners topmost priority for the batik printer feature is the 'ability to adjust and maintain the temperature of wax' (17.54%) while the non-batik practitioners chose 'ability to deliver a variety of complex designs' (15.94%). The least required feature for the batik printer was related to the size of the batik printer. The mapping between customer requirements (VOC) and technical requirements identified that the extruder design (21.3%), the heating element (18%), and nozzle diameter (17.8%) were the most critical components for the batik printer. Several conceptual designs of the extrusion unit, cartesian-based batik printer, and 2D image conversion using open-sourced software were proposed at the end of this work

A review on the Malaysian and Indonesian batik production, challenges, and innovations in the 21st century

Malaysia and Indonesia are well known as prolific producers of batik in Southeast Asia. The history of batik in both countries is deeply intertwined for more than a century. Most available published works related to batik production, challenges, and innovations were discussed within the local batik context of each country. This study aims to identify collectively how far batik, as a creative industry in these countries has progressed since its establishment until the present 21st century. It was notable that batik craftsmanships have been mostly maintained as similar tools and techniques are persistently being used until today in both countries. Significant progress was observed in the design and stylization of the batik design with the use of digital approaches such as fractal geometry. Similar challenging problems faced by both nations were highlighted and clustered into internal and external issues. It was concluded that assimilations of Third Industrial Revolution technology (IR3.0) primarily centered on the use of computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing to improve existing batik production. Emerging studies have shown the positive impact of integrating Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR4.0) technology such as augmented reality (AR) in promoting batik knowledge and transmitting batik as an intangible cultural heritage. The transmission of batik skills to the young generation has been a persistent problem. Thus, a brief framework was proposed to exemplify how IR4.0 technology can innovatively be used to transmit the batik skills via education platform