Product Launch

We as a team planned well for the product launch. It was a good team work I believe. Everyone did there bit,some of them were really creative had a lot of Ideas. 

Product Name 

I came with some names and taglines for our product that included:

1. Beef Bites-The irresistible bite
2. Beef Bites- Spice up Life
3. Dragon Flames
4. Beef-e-sensual etc

Product Logo

Me,Vicky and Mekala designed the logo for our product,which can be seen in : http://www.scribd.com/doc/104464686

Product Video

I made a video targeting the launch function of our product using Windows Live Media Player which was converted into  a avi file and uploaded on YouTube, the link of which is: 

Product Marketing Poster:

I prepared the marketing poster using Windows Publisher 2010.

It can be viewed as : http://www.scribd.com/doc/104465575

Product Brochure:

I designed the teams product brochure. The designed poster was 2 sided that included a brief about the product, its benefits, Nutritional composition about the company, contact details and the pack design.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/104465932/Brochures

HACCP

I was part of the 5-member HACCP team. The other team members were Harrison,Vicky,I first drew the process flowchart  and came up with 3CCPs which I thought were relevant. The CCPs identified were raw material storage,slicing and drying. When the team sat down for discussion,others agreed and made suggestions on it.We then worked out on the Haccp analysis,did a lot of research work together,made tabulations and figured a final HACCP plan. Scanned through books like 

• HACCP -A Practical approach by Sara Mortimore,Carol Wallace
• 
  

Gantt Chart

I was solely responsible for the teams Gantt chart preparation initially but later Harry joined as we had a lot of time sheets to compile. I am particularly not a fan of this task as it involved a lot of time and patience and did little/no good for the project though I am glad I got a chance to learn and understand the software. In a way it was fun to go through some member's time sheets showing that they worked for 9+ hours in a day when you know they really haven't.A compilation of unit 3 time sheets can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/104235140

An example of the gantt file is as:

GMP/GHP

Harrison and myself were in charge of proposing a Pre-requisite programme for Good manufacturing (GMP) and Good Hygiene Practise (GHP).

We collected information on various standard guidelines and procedures that has to be followed in the industry to deliver a safe product.  We then looked into our process flowchart and concluded on the essential requirements.
Some the standards established for a product were on:

• Raw Materials Intake and Storage (Onion, Garlic, Ginger, Chillies, Parsley) tthat included equipment calibration,handling equipment,storage guidelines etc
• Marination, Drying and Cooling- HVAC 
• Traceability and detection of foreign bodies
• Storage of Finished Product- FIFO etc

We made sure that all areas within the factory were looked into. We referred various books including Codex Alimentarius ; Sanitation,Safety and Environmental standards etc

Miscellaneous

Apart from my Assigned tasks like Factory Layout,HACCP,GMP/GHP ,Marketing and Gantt/Timesheet, I made sure that I understood the basics of all the other tasks assigned to the group as a whole.

• For the group sensory tasting experiments,I learned how to use the Compusense Software with the help of Harrison,who was in charge of it.Played a vital role in ensuring that enough products were produced for all tasting sessions,designed/printed and distributed posters around the university and served assessors for all the sensory experiments conducted.
• Learned from Vicky how the optimisation and screening experiments were done.
• Even though Lin and Shujuan were responsible for the process and equipment flowchart,when I had asked them to submit their work to compile in the report,I found that most of the machines were not relevant and that pictures/specfications etc were not mentioned at all. So I worked on it,finding which equipment will be relevant to the process we have and also worked out the number of such machines that will be required in the industrial scale production.
• Me and Vicky worked on the final editing of the report for Unit 3 after considering the flaws we had in the previous reports.
• Researched and learned from Mekala on how the Shelf life studies were done.
• The team had decided on doing vacuum packaging for the large scale production of our product but after doing my share of research I found that it was MAP that would be suitable for our product and not vacuum.Found a lot of literature reviews and passed them to her so that she could use them for report writing.

CAD & The Factory Layout

To start designing a Factory layout,I first researched on various parameters required,existing food plant layouts and then wrote down the necessary parts of an industry.







Since the process flow chart was still not finalized,I  concluded the areas in general as:
 1) Receiving and Shipping Areas
 2) Storage Area
 3) Production
 4) Packaging/Dispatch
 5) Employee/Welfare areas
 6) Waste water treatment,water tank.
 7) Laboratories
 8)Office
 9) Electrical substations etc

In the meantime,I helped Lin/Shujuan to compplete the process flow diagram and the machines that we would require.
When the group finalized on the process flowchart,I drew a rough plant layout that looked like this:

After a detailed meeting with Dr.Peter, realizing that there were a lot of flaws in the drawing,Me and Mekala drew a new layout taking into consideration the process flow,traffic flow to minimize contamination,ease of getting to the desired department/lab/facilities and restricting public assess. The layout was amended n number of times with change in process flow change and to make it have a proper sequence of material flow. 

On deciding the layout.Me and Bene worked out the areas that will be required for the factory considering the average machine size and other parameters.

I then referred several books on CAD to draw the layout in a 2D form. Finally came up with a Factory layout that looked like this:

Some of the books/websites used for reference were:

• http://www.ncagr.gov/meatpoultry/pdf/Facility%20Guidelines.pdf
• http://www.extension.iastate.edu/publications/PM2077.pdf
• Engineering Drawing from First Principles using AutoCAD

1st Group Meeting

The group met today at the Food Science Laboratory for the first meeting of the group to commence activity for Unit III. Every team member was allowed to discuss what task they wanted to work on and as I thought I had basic understanding of CAD program,i decided to opt for Plant layout designing. Later Mekala said she wanted to join me in designing the layout. I also wanted to do the product optimisation part but since members were already assigned for that task I decided to just help them.Also,the team wanted me to take responsibility of the Gantt charts and I was happy to work on it as well.