Color Brick Assembly Line
The Problem
A manufacturing company called Color Bricks has a high demand for their product, the Color Brick.
We have been asked to mass produce Color Bricks. The criteria is that we have to make 10 bricks in 20 minutes. In order to make more bricks the process of making the bricks must be faster, in order to accomplish this in the time our class is going to split up into two groups and form assembly lines to compete in who can make the most bricks in 20 minutes.
Making a Brick?
A color brick is harder to make then you might think considering the fact that it has to meet quality control/criteria. The stripes on the side of the bag have to be exactly 1 cm apart and 1 cm wide. One side of the bag must have 3 orange circles and 3 red circles. Three of the circles have to have a 3 cm radius and the other 3 should be 1 cm. And it should have the same thing on the opposite side except the circles should be green and blue. The words on the side have to be equally spaced and 5 cm tall. So it's safe to say that it's nearly impossible to make ten bricks on your own in 20 minutes, when I tested this I barely finished one brick in time and it didn't even meet quality control.
Constraints :
Some constraints that my team faced is that we only had classroom tools and each other to complete this task. With the lack of robots to help like many other manufacturing companies, we had to figure out the fastest way that worked with what we had been provided with.
My team's process :
Our teacher split us into teams to figure out how to make ten bricks using an assembly line, and to see which group could finish faster with the most bricks. My group first discussed what worked and failed for us when we made bricks on our own and what we should change to make more bricks effectively. We decided to make stensiles and then assigned every one to a space that we felt worked best for them. But when we tested our assembly set up there was a huge bottle neck due to the stencils being finished faster then they could be colored in. At the end of our test we had not made one brick. So when we reassed, we moved people around and merged coloring and stensiling into one job. As well as reassigned people to jobs that fit us all better, and separating jobs to make them faster and more effective. Now we had to do our final test against the other team.
Final Reflection:
Overall, my team worked well together strategizing and talking over our mistakes in order to make the assembly line move quickly and effectively. Everyone pitched in and did their part. I feel as if I listened to everyone's ideas and we all communicated well on how to merge our ideas to work best. I also feel as if I worked well on advocating for myself and my team when I was confused or when others needed help. Because of our team work and cooperation, we won the competition with 6 bricks made in 20 minutes.
