Food Processing—Weekend Trip to Visit our Stakeholders

This weekend we went to visit our stakeholders, seven women total, who live in four different towns about an hour and a half from Kumasi. Our goal for this trip was to take these women the two Graters and three Presses that we built last week. Because we did not feel that the Graters were completely finished, we decided not to sell the Graters to the women on this trip, but instead demonstrated them and then brought them back with us to ITTU to fine tune until our next trip on Thursday.

Saturday, May 14^th 2016

When we came back to home base on Friday we continued working on the machines until 2 am. At that point, the Tech Subteam and Ben decided to call it a night and to take our machines in their current, almost-finished state to our stakeholders. We would not be selling the machines now, but just demonstrating them. When we return to the towns on Thursday, we will take the completed machines to the women.

Our first visit on Saturday was to see Hawa and Abigail in Adumkrom. We took a new Press to Hawa and demonstrated the new Grater to Abigail.

Hawa using her new press

Abigail looking at her new grater

After showing the new Press to Hawa and having her use it, she said that she likes this design most since it is not tedious and is easy to use---just what we like to hear! When we demonstrated the new Grater to Abigail, she gave us the feedback that she would like the grater to also grate different vegetables—this is something common we hear: the woman want the machine to do more, and more, and more. We take this as a compliment since it means that the machine grates so well that the women would like to use it for as many things as possible.

Our next stop was Akosua in Pekyerekye (PKK). She already has a Grater (a previous prototype with a slightly different design), but we are giving her a new Grater for 5 months as a trial run.

Luke performing a demo of the new grater for Akosua

Peeling cassava

We spoke with Akosua, her husband, and brothers about finances and machine features for a while before heading out. She was upset that we weren’t leaving the Grater with her, but we assured her that we were coming back Thursday with the finished machine. Although many men like to become involved in the process, we have to keep everyone focused that our project is focused on women for a women-led market. Although the men have many ideas and become very passionate about what else the machine could do, we always bring the conversation back to the woman and ask her what she thinks and wants.

Akosua, her husband (far left), and brothers

Right before leaving Akosua’s, I snapped this picture of Bench and just had to share it.

Bench the Gentle Giant

Just these two visits filled up all of Saturday! After visiting our stakeholders we went to our guesthouse to set up camp and have dinner. We helped grind “agushie” and also ate many mangos!

Luke grinding agushie

Eating mangos before dinner

After dinner we called it an early night (at 9pm!) so that we could have an early start (6pm) the next day.

Sunday, May 15^th 2016

We started our Sunday at Akosua’s to continue our visit. When we arrived she was frying the gari. Our visit was brief, but we were able to meet a new Stakeholder, Dora Ali, who is interested in both a Grater and a Press. We will be building these machines in the next weeks. When we left, Akosua gave Ben a huge handshake--she was really happy with her new machine!

Akosua frying cassava

Selfie after saying good-bye

Next we went to see Rebecca in Akutuase. We wanted to check-in on the new Press that she received last week. As soon as we arrived we saw one of the biggest bags being pressed with her new machine—she is definitely using it to its potential! Rebecca told us that she has been able to process more cassava since receiving the machines, which has given her more a higher income as well as more time. She is also happy that the machines make it so that she doesn’t have to ask anyone for help as she processes. She even said that she completely abandoned her previous methods of processing cassava by hand!

Rebecca and her new press

Our last stop was at Flaustina’s house in Wioso. Flaustina has ordered both machines and has gone through the bank to acquire a loan to pay for her machines. When we arrived, they were very happy to finally have us there. While we showed her how to use both the Grater and the Press, more and more people from the town became interested in what was happening, and before we knew it, there were more than 70 people surrounding us. It was quite the experience!

Flaustina grating cassava with her new machine 

She's already taking great care of her machines! 

We suddenly had an audience!

These children followed us to the van so we asked them to pose for a picture

After leaving Flaustina’s, we had dinner and drove back to Kumasi. We learned a lot from this trip and have every motivation to work hard this coming week to make as many machines as possible for these women. The women we met are driven, clever, hard working, and grateful for this opportunity to increase their productivity. What inspirational women!

Food Processing---Back at ITTU!

This morning we had a team pow-wow to strategize our goals for the three remaining workdays we have at ITTU (we leave Thursday to visit our stakeholders then continue onto Accra for our last two days).  Visiting our stakeholders really made our mission and goals clear and focused, so for the next days the Tech Subteam will be completing the two Graters from last week, as well as building a third Grater from scratch with the workers at ITTU in order to transfer knowledge. The Business Subteam will be documenting our visit as well as setting up next semester’s ADE team in order to facilitate a smooth transition.

Most importantly, today we successfully worked on transferring knowledge. The Business Subteam began documenting our trip this past weekend as well as writing documents that are brief synopsis of the work we've done this semester so that the next team can pick up our work and keep moving full force. The Tech Subteam transferred knowledge by co-building with the workers at ITTU and teaching them how to build all parts of the machines. By the end of today, we really felt confident in leaving the construction of the machines fully in the hands of Deborah, Asante, and ITTU.

I'm keeping this post brief since we had such a long weekend post. We'll check back in tomorrow!

Deborah and Bench working on the chutes

Ben and the heads at ITTU

Ben making sure this tool was calibrating accurately. If you look closely, you can see it says 98 degrees Fahrenheit!

Food Processing--Two Graters and Three Presses DONE (mostly)!

When we arrived at ITTU this morning, we all immediately got to work. The painter is set to arrive at 10 am and we need to have machines ready for him to start painting. Most of the Graters and Presses are near completion, so we just need to focus on assembly. Asha and Maria finished spot-welding the chutes and then mounted the motors to the frames. Shan used a flap wheel to polish off all the burs created with the spot welding—after deburring by hand with a file, he found the efficiency of the machine “awesome!”

Maria and Asha mounting a motor to its frame

Shan deburring with a flap wheel

By 10 am the Presses were ready for painting—we were just waiting for George to arrive with the boards for the Presses. Luke and Bench still needed to weld the chute onto the motor frame, but they had a good window of time before the painter arrived. In the meantime, they designed, spot welded, and stick welded parts of the Grater.

Luke and Francis stick welding

Bench, Shan, and Luke spot welding the motor frame

The Graters and Presses were finally painted around 1 pm, but the Graters were not finished yet. We still had to finish parts of the chute (this didn’t need painting so we kept working on it). While the Tech Subteam finished the last parts of the Grater, the Business Subteam went out with Deborah to find fabric to have some clothes made. When we got back from finding the fabric at 6:30pm, the Tech Subteam was finishing up the machines--we stayed 2 hours past the shop's closing! 

We are currently back at our home-base doing last minute touches on the Graters. We still need to test the machines to make sure that we're taking working machines to PKK tomorrow. We have a packed schedule for the next two days as we try to meet with as many stakeholders as possible. Fingers crossed that the Graters will be finished soon enough for a good night's rest--TBD tomorrow!

Finishing the Graters tonight at home!

Food Processing—Build, build, build!

Last night after we had dinner, we had a team discussion about our production timeline, specifically for the next two workdays. Our goal is to take two Graters and three Presses on our trip to PKK this weekend where we will meet our stakeholders. In order to achieve our goal, today is a vital workday since we need to produce the machines by Friday in order to have them painted (and dried) during the day on Friday. That means that all assembly needs to happen today!

As soon as we arrived at ITTU, we began work right away. We had decided on tasks for each team member the night before so that when we came in to the shop we would get straight to work. Bench and Luke immediately began working on the Grater and by noon they were able to test a new coupler with cassava. Good news---it works! 

The coupler (the cylindrical silver and black piece) 

Grating cassava while testing the coupler

Bench bending the Grater chute

Meanwhile, Asha, Deborah, Shan, and Maria worked on building Grater heads. Deborah and Shan started by punching teeth in a sheet of metal, and then Asha and Deborah were able to fit the sheet around a plastic head. Once the plastic head was fitted, Asha and Maria spot welded the metal sheet onto the plastic head. By lunch time, we had finished three Grater heads!

Deborah and Shan punching teeth 

Asha and Deborah fitting the sheet onto the plastic head

Asha and Ben spot welding

We worked until the shop closed at 5pm--by that time we were just about finished with the two Graters and three Presses. Tomorrow morning we have to work quickly to get these five machines done before they are sent out to get painted at 10 am. We're going to bed early so that we can be well rested to continue working in the morning!

Food Processing: Second day at work—starting to get real work done!

We started today the same as yesterday: breakfast as a team at 7 am! Our goal for the next few days is to build two Graters and three Presses before the weekend when we are set to go to PKK to sell our machines. In order to be prepared for PKK, we need to set the prices of both the Grater and Press, and of course, build the machines. Once we arrived at ITTU, some of us set out to look for machine parts (necessary to build our machines) at the shops in Suami Magazine. We first visited Obeng Engineering, which has been manufacturing some Grater parts for us. We were specifically looking for a pipe bender—below is a video of the pipe bending in action!

After hours of looking for parts in the shops (we found some parts, but didn’t find others), we came back to ITTU to find the woman with coconuts! We all enjoyed one…or two J

The team taking a break to drink some coconuts

For the rest of the day we focused on starting to build our Graters and Presses. We needed all hands on deck so even the Business Subteam (they were also shop trained at Olin) participated in the mechanics! Asante and Deborah were also in the weeds of it all and by the end of the day, they had produced a head for the Grater. 

Shan and Maria deburring flanges

Asha chamfering the square shafts

Bench and Luke bending the chute

Tomorrow we plan to finish building two graters and start grating cassava. Perhaps we will also have a press built, or two---TBD tomorrow! :)

Food Processing: Day One at ITTU—Preparing to build our machines!

Today was our first day at ITTU in Kumasi. We woke up after a good night’s rest and left for work at 7:30am. ITTU is located in Suami Magazine, a town that specializes in selling any and all parts of cars. If you could imagine an outside market-type where store after store after store is filled to the brim with their products, each one specializing in one specific product (tires, screws, bumpers, doors, steering wheels, belts, etc.) then you would be imaging exactly what we saw. 

Suami Magazine

Suami Magazine

At ITTU we finally met William, James and Francis, part of the team who operates the manufacturing of the Grater and Press in Ghana. We began by unpacking all the gear we brought in 9 suitcases; we filled up our room with piles of metal, plastic, and baggies as we sorted all our material.

We focused on preparing our tasks that we will be accomplishing in the next two weeks. The Tech Subteam worked on listing machine inventory so that they know what materials we still need to purchase to build our machines. They were even able to start testing some spot welding for a machine part that was ideated back at Olin. The Business Subteam spent the day with Deborah, talking about the cost and pricing of our machines.

Team Task-list Board

Tech Subteam

Business Subteam with Ben and Deborah

During the day we were able to eat the mangos we bought on the drive over to ITTU--the mangos were small, juicy, and very sweet! We also drank and ate some fresh coconuts from a woman who came to ITTU with a bowl full of them. We asked her to come back tomorrow! We are learning to drink water from sachets as well as wash our hands with them. At my first attempt I squirted my face on accident! But I'm getting the hang of it. 

Today was a great first day--excited for tomorrow!

Food Processing: After a semester of work and day of travel, we finally arrived!

Our trip began at 10 am on Sunday when we all arrived at Logan Airport, and ended at 8:00 am (4:00 am EST) the next day when we landed in Accra. Our long-term friend and TroTro driver, Sammy, picked us up at the airport. He drove us for 6 hours to our destination, KNUST where we will be staying for the next two weeks. Once we were settled in we finally met in person with Deborah and Asante, the leads of the team in Ghana. They have the same wide smiles and happy eyes that we became familiar with in the past months over Skype—we were so glad to finally meet them! They were kind enough to stop by and say hi before we went off to an early dinner, at which some members of our team were dozing off--at this point we’d been awake for over 24 hours and were ready for bed! After a delicious dinner, we called it a night and went to bed around 9pm. Tomorrow will be our first day at work!

The view arriving in Accra