VIETNAM GLOBAL HEALTH – GROUNDING OUR WORK IN FEASIBILITY

The next couple of days mark the era of road trips.  I am currently sitting in a seven-seater car with Hoa, Chloe, Elizabeth, and Maire -- on our way to Yen Minh Hospital, 9h north of Hanoi.  The plan is to arrive in the evening, get some rest at the local hotel, and start Friday morning with our interview.  Another 9h trip back to Hanoi, a brief weekend respite, then two hospital visits on Monday.  We will need to process each interview right after they occur, so that we can adequately adapt and prepare for the next.

But all that has yet to occur. Olin's design curriculum unintentionally emphasizes gauging product/service desirability as the most glamorous aspect of these trips -- the criticality to product/service adoption, the rigorous interviews (and the resulting evocative photos!), the pivot-inducing insights. And considering Olin is an engineering college, we must actively check our impulses to create features for technology's sake.

But, feasibility (can we realistically make this?) and viability (can we stay in business?) are as equally important. Working with MTTS has therefore been a boon, because the ADE Global Health team has been able to explore design-for-manufacture and business viability in the context of an already-existing infrastructure and support system.

Source: Pinterest.

Because our visit to the district hospital Moc Chau fell through due to security concerns, we've spent two days, not just one, at MTTS. The cancellation was disappointing, but it bought us time we otherwise would not have had to review IEC's alarm standard and brainstorm a control panel that more holistically integrated alarms. And as scheduled, we: (a) brought our MTTS liaisons up to speed with our spring semester progress, and (b) solicited advice on design-for-manufacture and product point-of-view. These sessions will be key to situating next semester's engineering and design work.

DESIGN FOR MANUFACTURE

Greg (CEO, MTTS), Chloe (MTTS), Maire (ADE), and myself (ADE)
hovering around Greg's laptop, trying to distinguish response from echo

Challenge:  How to cost- and time-effectively embed the heating element into the bassinet?

We called e-BI, a vacuum forming broker located in China that currently handles Firefly bassinet production, to investigate the possibility of embedding the heating element directly into the bassinet as it is being vacuum formed.  This process would – if proven technically possible – would reduce the number of intermediary post-production steps and time between raw material and finished product.

After some back and forth, the e-BI engineers promised to deliver a range of proposals to MTTS next week.  Though we did not leave with anything definitive, the phone call, conducted over Skype, laid bare the challenges around brokering international manufacturing.  The internet lag and persistent aural echo was compounded by translation challenges: we would explain the product concept in English to e-BI’s project manager, who would translate into Mandarin for her engineers.  The engineers would ask Wendy clarifying questions in Mandarin, which she would translate back to us in English.  We spent a lot of time waiting for translation and fiddling with Skype settings, but I was particularly frustrated because though I could certainly *understand* the Mandarin, I don’t speak the dialect well enough to articulate a response past casual conversational.  When we ended the call, Greg sighed, “You see, this is why we try to keep manufacturing in Hanoi.”

Steffen and Trong said that this PCB, measuring a mere ~5" x 2",
is more than capable of filling all our electronics controls needs.

Challenge: How can we shrink PCBs to afford freedom in form-factor design?

Steffen and Trong, engineering leads at MTTS, stated that the relatively small PCB (printed circuit board) pictured above would be capable of powering all our electronics control needs, from heating element power management to button and LCD screen control. So far, we have been using Arduinos and other hobby components -- components that are bulky and, if scaled for the manufacture level, very quickly expensive.

By assuming this small PCB size, we give ourselves freedom in developing form factors for Otter's control panel because we have fewer and smaller components to house.

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These were just two of the many conversations our tiny team has held regarding product feasibility in the past 48h. We are truly fortunate to be working with MTTS. <I need a stronger conclusion here, indicating how all of our insights have allowed us to move forward. Especially since we are good at the horizontal, but not the verticals of T-shaped expertise.>