The wheelchair lift is a device used to transport disabled people with wheelchair in and out of a car/van/bus. The wheelchair lift is designed to be installed in the back or the side of the van.

The object of study for the redesign project was the BraunAbility Century Series wheelchair lift. When The lift is retracted fully into the van, it restricts the entry of passengers and also occupies a lot of space inside the van. The product uses a lot of components, which becomes more cumbersome for manufacturing and assembling. So we initially started analysing the product using customer surveys and Quality Function Deployment. Using those results, we performed Failure modes and Effect analysis, Design for Assembly analysis, and Design for Manufacturing, and identified the areas for improvement.

We then used a Pugh chart to decide the best idea, and we used the SCAMPER model and added different functionalities to our design. Once the design was finalised, we performed tolerance stack up analysis and cost analysis on the re-designed wheelchair lift. We simulated the Strength and Reliability of the wheelchair by performing a Finite Element Analysis analysis using SolidWorks.