Chapter 5 "Brainstorming of ideas"

Hi lovely Readers,

We are back again with today's episode of our blog and today we are discussing the Brainstorming of Ideas.

The problem being tackled by the group is to find alternative groundnut shelling methods for farmers. In the idea generation process, through research, we discovered there was an existing solution to the already existing problem. The existing groundnut shelling machine is a pedal operated groundnut sheller. When the user pedals the bicycle, the flywheel rotates which generates the shear stress required to shell the groundnuts.

From our field research and we concluded that our community partner needs a machine or a method of shelling groundnuts that is efficient in terms of cost, time, and preserving the quality of the groundnuts so that they would be able to enlarge their business and make more profits.

For project design, we identified the main subsystems need to be improved to fulfil our user’s needs. The subsystems identified are

1. Power subsystem

2. Shelling subsystem

3. Separation subsystem.

Through the guidance of the CCB workbook, when there is an existing solution, one of three types of design ideas may be generated. These can be scaled designs, evolutionary designs or revolutionary designs. Our group aims to have an evolutionary design to improve the already existing solution. For our brainstorming process, we used Disney’s brainstorming method, the three-legged stool; the dreamer, the realist and the critic.

In the “dreamer” stage, we each brainstormed as many ideas as possible and noted down on the sticky notes. There was not filter at this stage and crazy ideas were generated. After brainstorming, the ideas were then categorized into our project’s three subsystems. Since each subsystem had lot of crazy ideas, the next stage we went through was to narrow our crazy ideas using the “realist”. The criteria used to eliminate some of the ideas were feasibility and how some cannot be achieved. Our user’s design scope requirements were not used as a criterion at this stage.

Few ideas under each subsystem that survived the REALIST stage are as outlined below.

Power subsystem

1. Pedal Driven

2. Motor Driven

3. Hand driven

Shelling Subsystem

1. Bar type shelling device

2. Blunt shelling blade

3. Disk type shelling device

4. Roller type shelling device

5. Spike tooth cylinder device

Separation Subsystem

1. Manual separation

2. Motor-powered sieving bed

3. Pedal Driven Blower

4. Semi-circular mesh

An image of the ideas in shelling subsystem

The last crucial stage in our brainstorming process was the Critic. At this stage, the Pugh charts were used to finally evaluate ideas. For each subsystem a pugh chart was created to evaluate ideas under it. To determine the desired scope of our project, we had to list and quantify the needs of our community partner. The evaluation criteria used were inspired from the design specifications of our user’s need.

The design specifications were

1. Shelling Speed

2. Quality of nuts

3. Yield

4. Durability

5. Power needed

6. Cost

7. Safety

8. Ease of use

9. Simplicity

After Pugh chart evaluation, the power system chosen to drive the spike tooth cylinder device is the pedal-driven mechanism utilising a bicycle. For the shelling subsystem, the Spike tooth cylinder device scored the highest points and was chosen by the team as the final idea. Lastly, for the separation of nuts, the Motor-powered sieving bed was selected as it topped the chart.

Thank you for reading today's blog

TILL WE MEET AGAIN