Question

Within a large catering organization many slices of bread must be buttered. This is a tedious and time consuming task. You are required to design an automatic process of applying the butter to the bread.

i. For the Design Specification, list the five most important requirements of this product in rank order.

ii. Generate five concept designs that meet the Design Specification requirements in (i). Produce simple sketches of each of your concepts and label the key features. (Note! Your sketch and labeling alone must communicate your concept ideas).

iii. Using the requirements in (i) and the concepts in (ii), rank each design and briefly comment on the suitability of the selected design.

Answer 1

Answer for part - i

Design is actually a draft or plan to show the functioning of a machine or object or some entity. Manufacturing any thing without proper planning costs time, resources and money. Thus, while designing itself we consider manufacturing and post - manufacuturing or maintaince scenario as well.

In here, the features which are required in automating the process are:

1. Speed: Do we need a machine which applies butter at a high speed or low speed. In case we choose one with high speed then probably one machine would do the task but what if it fails at high work load? So, in such case we could choose of a low speed machine and having two to three machines.
2. Defect identification: As large number bread must be buttered there must be a defect identification in bread. Generally stale bread crumbles, and our esteemed customers might not like it, so it would be better if we sort and discard it.  
3. Power source: If we were able to make a battery operated machine it can be accommodated every where, but to find a electric power source might be bit difficult, we always have a limitation on working area i.e we should work where there is power source. But, on the other hand, batter operated might require battery change when it depletes which kills some time.
4. Spreading butter: How do we want to spread the butter only one direction or two direction? By increasing the number of choices we need to make such arrangement to spread butter which will increase the time required to butter the bread and in turn increase the cost of the machine.
5. Finished product: How do we wish to collect the finished bread? There should be a seperate collector designed We cannot stack the bread one above the other, that will spoil our effort of buttering the bread.
6. Modifications in future: This is the most important point of design. In future if we can even toast the bread along with the current operatiion that would simplify the work and increase the worth of machine.

Answer for part - ii

Answer for part - iii

case 1 - using knife to spread butter: This can be taken from the basic method of applying butter which humans generally do. This is time consuming and not feasible on large scale and for swift operation.

case 2 - using roller to spread butter: This is the next level of automation which can do the job swiftly and applies butter uniformly but operating a roller requires additional motor, which could increase the cost.

case 3 - pick up the bread and dip it in pool of butter: This is one option but then we need to dry the butter off, as excess butter will drip.

case 4 - inclined roller press: Rollers apply butter uniformly but if we incline it and use gravity this might be able to do the job swiftly and effectively.

case 5 - Butter coated grills: This is considered to be the best feasible option, using gravity to do the work. Have a butter coated grill and bread will roll on it thus butter will be applied uniformly and the cost of machine is low.