A new methodology to select hardwood species for wooden products

In general, only a few wooden species are used or even considered for any given wooden product, even though hundreds of alternative wood species are available. In many cases, the reason for this is tradition rather than availability, technical or aesthetic considerations and it can result in endangered species being used to an unnecessarily high degree. The purpose of this study was to develop a structured, quantifiable, and easy-to-use methodology to identify suitable hardwood species for a specific product. The methodology combines processes based on quality function deployment and multivariate data analysis in a three-step workflow, and takes different criteria into consideration. To verify the methodology, it was applied to an example product: an electric guitar. It was shown that the methodology was easy to use and provided useful and quantifiable results. Expansion of the underlying wood species data-set will be necessary to improve the performance in the future.