Development and prospect of a system for creating part layout charts in order to shorten delivery time of double-upright knee-ankle-foot-orthoses

Abstract

With the view to implement early rehabilitation for persons post-stroke, orthoses manufacturers are required to deliver double upright knee-ankle-foot orthoses as early as possible. The measurement/casting process and manufacturing process are performed at different departments in our company. Therefore, orthotists transfer the measurement data to the manufacturing department to order orthoses. One of the factors to hinder the shortening of delivery time of orthoses is that written paper documents are used to transfer information between these departments. In order to solve this problem, we have developed a system of creating parts layout drawings for paperless communication, using Photo Trace, a software program that we developed and launched. In this paper, we report how this system works and its prospects in the future.