Whats up All,
We’ve gotten behind on updates however wished to begin by saying regardless of the delays, there aren’t any severe points. We’re simply making an attempt to determine this entire hand constructed small batch manufacturing factor out.
High quality Management Bottleneck
The previous few weeks of meeting haven’t been going as easily as hoped. Our unique high quality management process concerned pulling 4 pictures via the Scace unit to confirm output temperature was matching the brew set temperature inside our anticipated tolerances. We discovered that the entire machines that had been working appropriately had been staying inside our 2C tolerance band. The larger difficulty we bumped into was machines being constructed incorrectly and having miscellaneous match or operate issues. These machines had to return to the construct course of to be torn aside, corrected, and re-tested.
This took time to not solely determine how we may modify our meeting course of for higher success but in addition modify our QC course of to focus extra on longevity as an alternative of a single set of shot pulls. We have now additionally modified our meeting process to now require every tech to carry out an preliminary check run after they construct every machine. If any difficulty arises, that exact technician will then be capable to see the issue and repair it instantly earlier than persevering with on to the subsequent construct. This beforehand created a bottleneck for us the place a technician would proceed constructing machines that had been failing QC then being despatched again to remodel which prevented us from really transport any items out. Our present purpose is to have a totally completed and QC’d machine packaged up and able to ship earlier than a technician can proceed on to the subsequent.
Technician Meeting
We’re nonetheless engaged on hiring extra technicians. Sadly we are actually all the way down to 2 technicians. We’re very proud of the work that these two are placing out and stay up for persevering with to develop our crew. We all know consideration to element is a should for this position and are nonetheless refining our interview course of to seek out technicians which might be more than likely to achieve this atmosphere.
Resolving Points
After we despatched the preliminary machines out, we got here throughout a number of instances with grounding points. We’ve since discovered options for all of these which included including washers to area our PCBs off from the mounting plate extra and guaranteeing that the electrically resistive tape between the PCB and mounting plate totally covers all solder factors on the again of the board.
Up to date High quality Management Course of
We have now an ever evolving QC course of. As we proceed to construct and check we discover new issues so as to add to the record to enhance high quality and consistency. We’ve began blowing out any residual water from the fill tube and steam wand traces earlier than transport. It is a easy course of however provides an extra step that we expect is critical for normal product cleanliness.
Basic
Because of the dynamic nature of a small store startup we’ll all the time proceed to attempt issues out, be taught, and adapt. We thought {that a} Launch Guidelines with an Order Progress Log could be useful for patrons to trace orders as they’re constructed, QC’d, and shipped out. Sadly as a result of we’ve had optimistic projections on our construct effectivity and been fallacious, we’ve determined to take away this progress log and embrace what’s been shipped out in our e-newsletter updates. This fashion we keep away from giving false hope and may intention to do a greater job at protecting folks updated with precise progress.
We all know folks will proceed to ask and make assumptions about when their orders will ship however there’s realistically no option to know this info. We have now confirmed that at our present stage, nothing is constant from week to week within the present construct course of. We are going to proceed to enhance our effectivity and construct as many machines as doable however there’s no option to know when precisely you’ll rent new store techs or lose some. We’re working to make issues secure in order that projections will be made however can not promise when that can occur.
We at present have 8 machines in packing containers which were QC’d a number of instances as a result of our altering and added processes. The one factor left for these machines is the transport label and dropping them off at FedEx.
9 extra machines want the ultimate stage of water blown out of the traces then are prepared to enter packing containers.
Our two store techs might be again to constructing new machines this week.
Ross is taking a while off from his day job to concentrate on getting the store organized and dealing with our techs to implement a streamlined methodology of going from construct all the best way to packaged and able to ship earlier than transferring on to the subsequent machine.
Movies
A video displaying swap between springs and from spring to direct has been filmed.
A video displaying set up the analog strain gauge, transducer, or each has additionally been filmed.
Sincerely,
Ross & William
