Transcript

Welcome to the next case study. I am sure you would have enjoyed the previous case study, it was a hard work. We really worked on the complete product for almost a year and 15 students along with me there were six technical staffs who are involved, and who are all specialists in machines. Almost eight iterations were made and finally we came out with a product. Many a times the proof of-concept comes very good, but when it goes towards a real live testing. Reallife testing is you run the machine for 24 hours, you run the machine for 8 hours, look at the spring performance, look at the weld whatever you do, look at the rigidity of the machine so, all these things come when you do a service condition testing. So when we did it we realized many small, small, small ,problems came into existence and of course the major success of this entire project was not me and my team, it was the customer who kept on giving feedback without getting frustrated which helped and improvising the product.

Case Study: Seed Sowing Machine

So, now let us see another product which is basically a seed sewing machine. A seed sewing is a common operation which happens in all farming or on in all paddy farming place. So here in almost all the underdeveloped countries we use manual seed sowing. So when you do manual seed sowing, we had so many problems so we have listed down those problems, did empathy study and then we have understood how to solve the problem. So your low cost ploughing or a seed sowing solution is an obvious need in poor and developing countries if we can add productivity value to the farmers life without a huge capital investment it will directly benefit the local economy of the country. See when you try to develop agricultural products please do the empathy study very very seriously. How long will this machine be used in a year? What is the cost which they can offer for this machine? What is the benefit for them in terms of throughput, capacity, efficiency is going to come to the user. So that is what we have to see and then decide the need as well as the costing for the product. This type of solution can be developed using low-cost materials and methods already available in the market.

Empathy Study

The first case study: this case study is all oriented towards frugal innovation. So seed sowing the empathy study in manual seeding it is not possible to achieve uniformity in distribution of the seed. A farmer may sow at a desired seed rate but in a row and the outer row distribution of seeds are likely to be uneven resulting in bunching and gaps in field which tries to reduce the productivity in terms of space utilization in field poor control over the depth of the seed placement. It is also the depth of the seed when it is sown. People don’t sow it vertically, people sow it at an angle and when people sown they try to just spread the seed so it is not equally spaced, it is always a bunch gets out of your hand. The effect of accuracy in seed planting of plant is a great problem because when you do a improper seed planting the productivity of the firm is completely reduced so here that is your need to develop your lowcost seed sowing machine which will enhance the productivity of the farmer. So the definition is very important and if I could also add the costing to it worth of rupees or dollars whatever it is xxx so then you put the clear definition of the problem and you look forward for solution.

Ideation

Ideation seed sowing with hands to manufacture seed sowing machine. This can be operated by a single operator to set fertilizer with sowed seed to level the ground in small extent to enable the machine for sowing of several of seeds like maize, wheat, etc. It should not be one sowing. So one seasonal use should not be there. To maintain the same distance between two seeds at the time of sowing, and when you maintain, when you use different seeds, the spacing also should vary. So you should try to develop a device or a machine which can accompany all those things. So with this definition of the problem we were trying to ideate, then we were trying to define work reliability under different working conditions, decrease the cost of the machines, decrease the labour cost, the machine can operate with small farming land and making use of machine which can be able to perform the operation.

Product Characteristics

So this is the systematic diagram keeping all these things various functionality was developed and this was a machine which was schematically done. So into the schematic, then various CAD models were developed, so this is a typical isometric CAD model where in which the seeds are dumped in the hopper and the seeds can be varied, the distances can be varied, the ploughing can be done by a single machine. A single operator it moves the machine in the form of course with larger energy it will not be with very smooth energy with larger energy because this sand can be clogged that can be lump, it can be marshy so, there should be a person with high physical strength who pushes this inside the farm. So it does ploughing, it does seeding and then it covers the land so all these operations. First, is to plant that means to say to put a seed, push it inside and then cover it so that the seed is properly covered so that it can germinate. So, all these operations are done in a single machine. So this is my symmetric view several iterations were made and finally, we have come down. Again I repeat here it is assumed the agriculture farmer who uses it male or a female they should have a high upper body strength, they should be physically fit, to move this equipment. The machine is not heavy, it is made light, we have used two pipes, we are used two frames, it is very light, but when it does a ploughing operation the resistive force which is given by the soil to the machine is high. So this is what is the product which you are developed. In order to avoid more of manual intensive a D.C. motor was also thought of.

D.C. Motors

So a D.C. motor is used in this model to drive the front wheel which further drives the distributor. So we have placed a motor and this motor if you want to run the motor you can use it solar or battery. So if you keep a battery again the battery becomes heavy, solar also solar panel or if you put a engine it also takes your load. So all these things can be thought of you can run the machine without motor and with motor.

Product Part Description

The hopper is it stores the seed which has to be sowed in the soil, then seed distributor it consists of a fluted roller which are driven by rear wheel with the help of a belt and pulley. So you can see a belt and a pulley is used so this will try to open and close the hopper so seeds can move inside one after the other if you want to put it in a row you have a series of flowers which are there. So cultivator the work of a cultivator is to tilt the soil so that the cultivator is here. So it is to tilt the soil. Just to tilt the soil so the required depth for the distributor is given so that the seed is placed inside the belt and the pulley drive transmits for the effort of the motor to the front end which is used for driving the device. So here are multiple views the low fidelity prototype and the final prototype were not much of difference. The high fidelity prototype was made almost to the final thing so this machine is low cost, maintenance free, which can do tilting of soil sowing of seed and covering the seed.

Design Specifications

Specifications for detailed specifications were done.

Prototyping: summary

So to summarize we have learnt to design a product using already available technologies integrated through innovation. So this is also part of frugal innovation. We have tried to directly empathize with economical constraints of poor farmers that cannot afford fancy solutions we first had a CAD and then developed the prototype we did a user testability and then finally out the product was released.

Thank you