Mass production readiness of a hardware start-up : assessing and improving product designs for manufacturing and assembly

Abstract

The US food and restaurant industry is witnessing a step change due to recent advancements in smart automation. Increasing labor costs, rising living costs and shortage of skilled labor is forcing restaurateurs to look for alternatives to remain in operation and maintain profit margins. Industrial robots, equipped with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities are now penetrating into commercial kitchens. The idea is to establish a symbiotic and highly efficient process flow between humans and robots in order to increase throughput, enhance food quality and improve customer experience. Miso Robotics, a robotics start-up based in Pasadena, is one of the leading change makers in this direction with a vision to create a kitchen for the future, integrated fully with robotic kitchen assistants. The company, through its flagship product Flippy, has demonstrated the capability to emulate human cooking behavior by making hamburgers. They also recently added frying capability to Flippy, which addresses a huge market need across the globe. In the summer of 2018, three graduate students from MIT worked with the team of Miso Robotics and consulted them on challenges related to product design, manufacturing and scalability. This thesis explores some of the challenges faced by a start-up during its production scale-up phase. It does so by presenting three case studies and emphasizing upon the importance of design for manufacturing and assembly, 3D printing and knowledge of existing solutions before solving a problem.