Food Processing -- Enter Suame Magazine

Day 3:

Today was our first day of work at ITTU, and it was a packed one. After an early breakfast and a quick stop en route for fresh fruit, we arrived at the facility. ITTU is located in Suame Magazine, a dense market full of vendors selling tools, parts, and services related to vehicles and manufacturing. Here you can find everything from socket sets to motor oil to an extra shovel for a multi-ton backhoe.

We greeted three of our fabrication partners who were in the shop today, William, Francis, and Bwotchi, and set out to work. While our business team unpacked and organized the tools and machine parts we had brought with us from Olin, our technical team was debriefed on our current product inventory levels and a few production difficulties that had cropped up recently. Once we were up to speed and settled in, we moved on to our planned tasks.

The technical team spent the next few hours working with ITTU’s sheet metal tools, making sure that we are set up to make accurate and repeatable cuts and bends as we move forward. The team also created a prototype chute of the newest design and improved on some manufacturing processes we had previously struggled with at Olin.

While the technical team stayed at the shop, the business team went along with Deborah and Asante through Suame Magazine in order to get materials for fabrication. After back and forth trips between shops, we were able to get sheet metal we needed from one shop, have it cut by another shop, and buy fabrication supplies from a third. Between shop trips we were able to make friends with the shop workers ending our Twi (widely spoken among Ghanaians)/English interchange with epic selfies.

When we arrived back at ITTU, we all grabbed a short lunch and hurriedly rushed back to work. The technical team went straight back to the machines, and the business team held down fort at our workroom in ITTU. After drafting up contracts for our customers and sales representatives, the business team had a conversation with Asante about actionable steps to successfully import our motors from China. Immediately after narrowing the options with him, we acted upon the first one and set back out to pace through Suame Magazine. Getting back to ITTU, the business team took a jab at helping the technical team with fabrication, hacksawing some parts in preparation for tomorrow’s tasks.

We worked right up until ITTU closed for the day, then took a tro tro back to the SMS Guest House at KNUST. It was a very full and exhausting day, but we can’t wait to get back to work tomorrow!