Taxonomy of Means and Ends in Aquaculture Production—Part 4: The Mapping of Technical Solutions onto Multiple Treatment Functions

Abstract

Designing aquaculture production units will require decisions on which treatment to include, e.g., the intensification of the system, and then a decision on a technical solution for each treatment function selected to implement. To complicate matters, each technical solution is not unique to each treatment function, but has a multiple effect on the system. This interaction of a technical solution to multiple treatment functions will play a part in the decision making process. Previous work by the authors has made a taxonomy of all technical solutions for the treatment function, and in this article, how technical solutions affect treatment functions is mapped. The article views the aquaculture production system as a transformation process with three sets of functions, input, treatment and output. Based on a comprehensive literature review where all technical solutions were found and categorized into a taxonomy, their effect on treatment function was mapped using a quality function deployment (QFD). The result is a matrix that gives an evaluation on the interaction. This work is a step towards an aquaculture engineering design methodology.