Pizza Box Folding Machine Designing Testing Case Study

Assignment Task

1. Three primary constraints of the project

The project has following major constraints:

Time

The president has divided the overall project work into two schedules. First, there is need to complete design and testing of the prototype in eight months. The project is starting from 2 January 2023 and it is required to be complete in August 2023. In this timeframe, the project team needs to prepare the design of the product, prototype the unit built, develop software and integrate and test the prototype. It is possible that there may be need of some rollback of the work due to changes in design alternatives but the overall prototype must be completed in this timeframe to ensure that production can be started on time (Heagney, 2016). In second phase, project needs to be developed and for that, a schedule of four months is determined. In this schedule, 200 units are required to produce and sold to the end-customers. It means that the production and sells of the units must be performed by the end of the current year.

Cost

The maximum allocated budget for the project is $750,000. There is no breakdown of the budget among the activities and decisions but it is clear that the budget contains the cost for planning, designing, production and testing of the protype and final product. It also includes the cost required to manage risks and challenges applicable on production cycle. It is assumed that 10% of the overall cost is reserved to manage the risks including rollback of works (Kerzner, 2017). However, the overall project cost cannot be exceeded to keep the project in success domain.

Project cost is derived from the average cost for the strong and weak demands estimated for the product. Each unit is estimated to be sold in $2,200. If there is strong demand of the product, total 1.050 units will be produced to generate estimated revenue of $2.3 million. If there is weaker demand, total 350 units will be sold and it will generate a revenue of $770,000, nearly even-break to initial investment.

Scope

Scope analysis is important to determine the potential value of the project (Jainendrakumar, 2015). The president has divided the project work in mainly these tasks: prototyping and production where prototyping includes design and production of design unit, development of software and integration of software to prepare prototype unit. Production phase includes two

Tasks such as production of the units and their selling to target customers. It is also identified that there is no organisation in local market that manufactures and sells pizza box folding units. However, the box folding task is not effortful but it can consume significant time of the pizza shops during peak seasons. The product has scope to target local pizza shops during initial years while management is perceiving a control on market for next ten years for such automatic box folding machines. Initial business case analysis also indicates that 35% of the surveyed local pizza shops have challenges to fold the box during their peak times and they are willing to have solution for this. It will enable them to focus on pizza making and other primary tasks of the business. Further, considering the strong and weak demand for the product, there is possibility to generate 51.3% and 1.3% revenue respectively.

The product has scope to hold up to 50 unfolded boxes and each unit has a display unit and count meter to keep the organisations informed for the current status of the unit. The units will be controlled by the integrated software and average time for folding a flat pizza box will be around 5 seconds. This product has scope to cover independent pizza shops in England but it can be expanded at national level if demand increases.

2. Project outcome

The final project is a pizza box folding machine that can hold up to 50 flat pizza box and fold them all in less than six minutes. Considering the intermediate stage of the project, there will be delivery of prototype design, an executable version of integrated software, coding, design specification of the prototype, marketing plan and user manuals to use the product (Harrison and Lock, 2017).

At the product level, there will be delivery of the units having dimension of maximum 4’ x 20’ x 44’ whereas additional 24’’ is reserved for main housing. Each unit will include a control panel, platform chain, motor, folding widgets and electronics whereas control panel includes count meter, count display and on/ off switch. The units will display a meaningful and easy-to-understand error to the users if there is any malfunctioning. There is also use of six lockable casters to move the machines easily whenever required. The statement of the work indicates that the brand logo will be placed on left side of the control panel and there will be use of aluminium to ensure that product is light weighted.

At operations level, the product delivers high performance and efficiency to fold the pizza box. It allows the organisations to fold the boxes while they are performing other tasks such as baking pizzas. Similarly, it enables to have minimum resources at workplace to accomplish this secondary task. It can reduce overall cost on per pizza and enable automation in activity to reduce time required to deliver a pizza to the customers.

At executive level, the manufacturer has several benefits. The project outcomes that the machine will be in demand for next 10 years and in this duration, the organisation can generate significant profitability because there is no competitor in industry and the organisation is going to patent the design of the product (Todorović et al., 2015). It can help the organisation to generate up to 51% revenue in a year. Market analysis as part of project intermediate outcomes indicates that there will be significant demand of the machine among the independent pizza shops while the demands may allow the business to be expand at national level.

Introduction

A Pizza Box Folding Machine, called the WIDGET PRO shall be designed, a prototype unit built, software developed and integrated, testing performed on the prototype unit, and an initial production of 200 WIDGET PRO units.

Design Of Widget Pro

2.1 Product Scope:

The WIDGET PRO shall be manufactured according to the following specifications:

• WIDGET PRO shall be no taller than 4’, no wider than 20”, and no longer than 44”, with 20” reserved for the Pizza Box Bin and 24” reserved for the Main Housing.
• The Pizza Box Bin shall hold up to 50 unfolded pizza boxes.
• The Unit’s Main Housing shall be located in the center of the unit containing the motor, platform chain, electronics, folding widgets, and the Control Panel.
• The Control Panel shall contain an On/Off Switch, a Count Meter, and a Count Display.
• The Count Display shall display error messages when the WIDGET PRO malfunctions. The error messages shall be in plain English and easy to understand.
• The DesignAll Inc. logo shall be engraved in the left center portion of the Control Panel.
• The unit shall contain a Pizza Box Platform located on the right side of the unit where the folded pizza boxes shall be placed
• The Pizza Box Platform shall include, the Folding Arms and Flat Box Stabilizer Arm.
• Six casters shall be placed on the bottom of the unit; four at each corner and two in the center. Each caster will have a lock mechanism so when applied will prevent WIDGET PRO from moving during operation.
• Widget Pro shall be made of aluminum for lightweight and ease of movement. The aluminum shall be charcoal gray.
• WIDGET PRO shall take no longer than 6 minutes to fold all 50 boxes. This equates to 5 seconds per box.
• Software modules shall be developed that controls the operation of the WIDGET PRO Unit.
• The software shall be integrated with the assembled hardware prior to unit testing
• Below is the initial drawing of the WIDGET PRO

3. Prototype Testing

• The prototype unit shall be subjected to a 4-week Environmental Test under high temperature, operation with dust, crumbs, and flour in the environment, with no-load operation.
• The WIDGET PRO unit shall undergo a 1-week Acceptance Test. The unit shall operate uninterrupted under normal operating environment and use, with no failures.

4. Manufacturing

Manufacturing Plan shall be developed when a plan to resolve the manufacturing issue is developed.

5. Marketing

• The Marketing Department shall analyze the market beyond the New England areas. A Marketing Plan will be complete within 7 weeks after contract award.
• The Marketing Department shall execute the approved Marketing Plan no later than 8 months after contract award.

6. Widget Pro Website

The Graphic Department shall be responsible to design and launch a WIDGET PRO website that is easily accessible to any pizza shop no than 3 months after contract award.

Widget Pro Sales

• The Sales Department shall market WIDGET PRO across New England through the end of 2023.
• The Sales Department shall manage the delivery of the WIDGET PRO to purchasing pizza shops. The WIDGET PRO shall be delivered within 21 days of order placement.

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