Forge.Fables [#5] Chimney Cleaning BoT for Commercial Kitchens
“It was a bright sunny day in January when after attending a Design Thinking session during ProtoSem, Khalid and I were engaged in intense brainstorming to identify significant problems, that we could take up and solve during the course, until he accidentally looked up at the ceiling and saw a closed air duct right above us and, Eureka! Little did we know then, that it was the start of an amazing journey. What flashed before our minds were the numerous lessons that we have learned about the ill-effects of poor quality of indoor air and we decided to take up this challenge head-on” recalls Ancil, the very genesis of what he calls, the most productive and influential journey.
Ancil Eric D’Silva, Akash Al Khalid, Praveen Babu M and Swetha Shri, the final-year students of Kumaraguru College of Technology, were part of the ProtoSem 19.1, and they have designed a DuctBoT, an innovative, affordable & accessible chimney cleaning solution to clean the kitchen ducts in hotels to ensure a safe and salubrious environment.
Right customer and Right Problem leads to a Right Product
HVAC systems act as the respiratory systems for people inside the buildings and statistics reveal that nearly 40 pounds of dust accumulates over a year in a building of 2178 Sq.ft area. The indoor air is nearly 70 times more polluted and studies suggest that indoor air pollution is several times more harmful than outdoor pollution, though the former receives very little attention. Given the fact that air in India is humid, mold-a-fungi grow at times in the ducts. These spores once inhaled are hazardous and result in respiratory diseases, building-related diseases, allergies, non-specific irritative effects, etc. Healthcare professionals reveal that long-term exposure to indoor microbial contamination aggravates the symptoms of Sick Building Syndrome (SBS). Compared with the naturally ventilated buildings, SBS morbidity in HVAC buildings has increased by up to 200%.
The magnitude and intensity of the problem seemed high until the team set out to talk to the beneficiaries to understand the exact problem and to validate its significance. But against their expectations and unlike what they inferred from Google, the team found that there was little knowledge and awareness about the problem because the maintenance teams at various buildings complied with the regulations and had their own ways to clean the ducts, periodically. They also spoke to employees who work inside the buildings only to find out that there was no emission of dust or hazardous pollutants from the HVAC systems. The maintenance engineers told them that they had entered into contracts with the vendor and the frequency of cleaning varies with the intensity of pollution in the buildings and cities.
“We would have directly attempted to design a solution carried away by the euphoria to try new things, hadn’t we been guided by our mentors to undertake problem validation and user discovery. We would have built a prototype/product that no one wants to use because the problem wasn’t significant enough. With his simple yet powerful mantra, ‘Right customer and Right Problem leads to a Right Product’, Vish Sahasranamam guided us with several insights on the importance of identifying the right problem and validating it with a right customer to design a customer-centric solution. When we approached the duct vendors, we gained a very valuable insight that the problem was highly predominant in the kitchen ducts.” says Khalid as he jogs his memory of how the managed innovation process with the set of tools & techniques from iTOOLS suite saved their efforts and time which otherwise, they would have invested working on a hypothetical problem. iTOOLS is a set of methods, tools & techniques designed by innovation experts at Forge, applying the principles of design thinking to help innovators come up with a compelling value proposition for their innovative technology-enabled solutions.
Overcoming Adoption Barriers, to fast-track Testing & Validation of Value Proposition
Kitchen exhaust ducts are used to keep the kitchen free from fumes and pollutants. In due course oil, grease and other effluents accumulate along the walls of the ducts. These effluents are highly combustible, which if ignited could cause serious property damage and pose a serious threat to the life of people inside the hotels. Debris descending from the ducts may also contaminate the food. The hotel is liable to losing its license given by FSSAI if the safety standards are not followed. Effluents accumulated reduce the life of the ducts on one hand, and there is increased power consumption, on the other hand.
On analysis, it was found that 43% of all fire accidents around the world in 2017 were due to unclean ducts. This has increased by 6% when compared with the data in 2016 and has been increasing steadily over the years. Such fires have damaged properties worth 170 million dollars and injured 110 civilians.
Food Safety and Standards Authority of India and the National Fire Protection Association of India have certain standards that all hotels have to comply with and failure to do so could even result in the closure of the establishment. Hotels clean their ducts once in every six months and occasionally twice during summer.
“We visited several hotels operating in various segments in and around Coimbatore to understand the significance of the problem. We found that the only solution in the market today is manual cleaning which is cumbersome, labour-intensive and time-consuming, and hotels have to shut their kitchen for at least 6 days. In manual cleaning, they apply a lathering soap and using brushes they remove the grease. Then they remove the ducts and spray diesel inside them to remove oil deposits from human inaccessible areas. This not only ignites the accumulated effluents but also damages the ducts. The ducts are damaged to the extent that they have to be replaced once a year and the damaged ducts are a primary reason as to why most hotels do not let outsiders into their kitchens. There is also a huge revenue loss due to the hotel downtime and closure during maintenance. We also visited one of South India’s largest Duct servicing companies and found that they have tried autonomous cleaning solutions but they failed because the grease that accumulates in the ducts is too dense to be cleaned automatically” says Praveen.
After studying the existing solutions and the adoption barriers, they concluded that the product should be designed such that it is adaptable to all sizes and shapes of ducts in the market, and can be operated and used by unskilled workers. The solution should be autonomous and should ensure a safe and a salubrious ecosystem for the employees. It should also reduce the downtime for maintenance which at present is 6 days.
Building the Right Device iteratively
The success of innovations as widely adopted products in the market depends on there being a market with a large number of customers willing to pay a price to purchase and use the product. To validate this potential, it is important for the innovator to rapidly design and develop a prototype that allows the customer to test and experience the value proposition and express the willingness to pay a certain price for the innovative solution. We call this the MUP — Minimum Usable Prototype, and we coach innovators to define the most effective MUP concept to rapidly test the target value proposition and assess the customer’s willingness-to-pay.
As a first version, the team built a BoT with rugged wheels and tested it with the ducts, only to find out that the wheels couldn’t move stably through the accumulated oil effluents and the rover was also floating on the effluents. To overcome this, the team studied the aspects of the vine-like robot designed by Stanford researchers and implemented the same as it has the capability to manoeuvre long distances by growing in desired directions.
The team iterated after receiving feedback from the users and have built a vine-like growth soft robot that can grow in the desired direction pushing the payload as it grows. Four spring supports are fixed on the sides of the main shaft to position the head in the center of the duct. A rotary sprinkler is mounted on the topmost part of the head and high-pressure water mixed with degreasing agents is sprayed. The rotation of the sprinkler is extended using a shaft and connected to a scrubber. A waterproof camera with an inbuilt LED is mounted on the top of the BoT to transmit feed from inside the ducts and the display is placed outside. Compared to the existing solution in the industry, this method can clean parts that cannot be accessed without damaging the ducts. This process is faster and is comparatively cost-efficient.
The BoT can clean ducts of various shapes and sizes, as it has suspension cylinders with springs fixed to the main shaft and the springs can either expand or contract to the required size. The main tube is positioned in the center of the duct and a rotary sprinkler is used to spray the cleansing agent with water under high-pressure. The scrubber has oversized plastic bristles that can clean the corners of the ducts efficiently. The cleansing agent flushes the effluents faster and the entire process can be completed in a short time, even during the interval between the last dinner and breakfast. This reduces the downtime of the kitchen, considerably. The chemical degreaser used is within the standards, non-flammable and environment-friendly and doesn’t affect the health of the employees.
Innovation in Product + Business Model= DISRUPTION
“As the device involves an air & water compressor, the Cost of ownership proves to be high. Vish has put forth an innovative business model, Device-as-a-service that makes the product affordable for the consumer as well as generates commercial profits. By highlighting how offering mobile connections in the country on the pre-paid model attracts low-income users as well as hedges the business model, he encourages us to go away from the conventional ‘purchase[ownership]’ oriented approach, to executing a ‘usage[outcomes]’ based model of selling device-as-a-platform, in which revenues can come from rentals, value-added-services delivered over the device, monetizing content or ads, etc. Inspired by this model, we have decided to take forward our product as a service.” says Khalid who is all set to take forward the Product Innovation into a full-fledged enterprise.
The teams are evaluated based on milestones right from the beginning of the process with a unique evaluation strategy, called Product Innovation Rubric, that enables the innovators to identify and manage risks by mapping their progress (right from the very first step of the process) to Customer-acceptance, Customer-commitment and Customer-motivation, thereby evaluating the true market potential of innovations.
“The science of managing risks in innovations with a structured process, tools, and PIR is unique and safeguarded us from being trapped into the valley of deaths, usually inherent in the innovation process. We were also provided with the opportunity to access the HWjunction 24x7, which has the most modern rapid prototyping tools and innovation labs with end-end guidance on prototyping from innovation mentors and industrial experts. We are thankful to Forge for forging us into real-engineers” says Swetha, who believes that their pre-incubation journey at Forge has been impactful and has given them the road-map to take forward their idea into product innovation and an enterprise.
The team participated in the EO GSEA, a premier global competition that is launched with a vision to empower student entrepreneurs to become the world’s most influential change-makers by recognizing students who own and operate a business while attending college or university. At the regional level event organized in Coimbatore, the team bagged the third prize and a cash prize of Rs. 10,000. They are confident about making it to the finals and winning recognition at the global level.
They have decided to pursue this as a startup right after graduation in June 2020, and are now working towards raising funds through grants.
