Task+1

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Drawing inspiration from the ‘genamicha’ green tea (**Genmaicha** "brown rice tea") is the Japanese name for green tea combined with roasted brown rice), we set out to improve on the recipe and avoid the rice floating on the surface of tea but instead sought the flavours. Task 1 in unit 3 required us to develop on the production process and the factory lay out. The question was whether to start production from the raw materials or do secondary processing and packaging in the factory setting. We spent time studying the primary processing of green tea as it was the main ingredient but it seemed feasible to do just the secondary processing in our factory setting. I prepared the gantt chart for the action plan.  **8/6-9/6**: The next tricky bit was selecting the factory floor plan. An idea of using three floors with the ground floor handling the packaging and dispatch. In the end, we decided to work on the layouts for each of the processes separately (batch production) and decide on the arrangement as a single floor or 3 floors depending on feasibility and costs.



Cereal tea color is green yellow due to the mixing of green tea leaves with roasted brown rice and red beans. Thus the tea has a strong roasted aroma and flavor. Product specification: PRODUCT TYPE- Cereal tea, blended tea STYLE- In tea bags PROCESSING TYPE- Steamed SPECIALITIES- Health beverage, Organic tea SMELL- High aroma, green tea mixed with cereal: pulse SHELF LIFE- Up to 12 months WEIGHT (g) - 2g per tea bag GRADE (F)-fanning PACKAGING- We discussed processing, equipment, factory layout of cereal tea. but we have some problems that are:  1. for factory layout---capacity, which means how amount of ingradients we need to prepare, and how amount of product will be produced.?
 * Japanese sencha (green tea leaves) mixed with cereal: pulse ratio
 * The light toasted aroma and flavor of the roasted brown rice is a nice variation to plain green tea
 * High nutritive value- The antioxidants in green tea are believed to reduce the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: justify;">Each carton box contains 20 individually aluminum sealed tea bags
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: justify;">ALUMINIUM SEALED PACKET SIZE- 7.6* 6.5cm (4.5g)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%; text-align: justify;">CARTON SIZE-8* 10.6* 6.6cm (48g)

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">2. for equipment layout is there need to know which equipment we would select?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">3. for materials: green tea leaves wheteher we need to prepare green tea leaves from fresh tea leaves?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">We met up with our tutor at 11:00 am on 14 th june and Prof. Paul give us some advice about our product's quality. For example, try to use different green tea to improve the quality of product and check the cost of processing, ingredients, equipments etc.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">In the factorty layout, we have 4 different storage room, because red beans and brown rice need to store in cool condition place, but flower and tea can be stored in room temperature place.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">for equipment, we need to know the specification of all equipment in order to know how amount of each ingredient will be prepared, and the capacity of each equipment, and temperature, time. so in this weekend, monica was responsibility for green tea, John and Gun were responsibility for brown rice,and chen and me were responsibility for red beans.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Cabinet Oven--Jie's findings

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Hammer Milling---choose John's

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Water Spray nozzle--we've got the same research found

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Parboiling---choose jie's resarch found

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">and we discussed the quality of our product. Jie was responsibie for different type of green tea in Chinese Supermarket and search the different cost of different types of green tea. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Jie bought one green tea in Chinese supermarket ie, Longjing Tea. and the cost is 2.45 pound.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Green tea: [|tea processin info] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">** The cost of green tea **

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Green tea is sold in health food shops, chemists and over the internet. It is generally quite cheap. But as with many dietary and herbal products, prices vary depending on the amount you buy and where you buy it.

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The quality or grade of green tea can also vary. The general rule is that better quality green tea costs more. The best quality tea is made from the first leaf buds that come in the spring. If you buy green tea over the internet, prices can vary even more. For example, one company we looked at online sold 50g of different types of green tea for between £2.30 and £13.50.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">one web link for the cost of different type of green tea:

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">[] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">We need to think about the market strategy of our product marketing. We can get down to do search and find the benefits of cereal tea, the product composition, cost, and opinions.

<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 14.6667px;">Task 1 in unit 3 required us to develop on the production process and the factory lay out. The question was whether to start production from the raw materials or do secondary processing and packaging in the factory setting. We spent time studying the primary processing of green tea as it was the main ingredient but it seemed feasible to do just the secondary processing in our factory setting.
 * 7/6:** Drawing inspiration from the ‘genamicha’ green tea (**Genmaicha** "brown rice tea") is the Japanese name for green tea combined with roasted brown rice), we set out to improve on the recipe and avoid the rice floating on the surface of tea but instead sought the flavours.


 * 8/6-9/6**: The next tricky bit was selecting the factory floor plan. I put forward an idea of using three floors with the ground floor handling the packaging and dispatch. In the end, we decided to work on the layouts for each of the processes separately (batch production) and decide on the arrangement as a single floor or 3 floors depending on feasibility and costs.

We tried selecting our equipments around the production capacity in an 8 hour shift which Dr Mel had suggested as 10,000 units. We decided that each unit could be a box of 20 sealed tea bags of 2grams each! While selecting the equipments we also looked into options for a continuous process instead of batch. Another roadblock was the storage of raw materials. Each of our raw materials required low temperature and low humidity conditions for storage in order to avoid oxidation and mycotoxins. The storage conditions were also studied and a note was made of the specific technical requirements.

**21/6 to 24/6:** We had a discussion with Dr Peter about choosing the factors and levels for our screening experiments. We decided to use a factorial design approach from Design of Experiments techniques and our experiment contained 3 factors with 2 levels each. The team developed an experimental design with all possible combinations of factors (to include synergistic effects) and each of our assessors therefore had to assess 8 samples (2 3 =8) i.e., One sample set for an assessor contained 8 samples. We decided to use 40 assessors and the total of number of samples then would be 320 (40*8=320). Dr Peter taught us how to design the questionnaire on Compusense and we were able to obtain a slot for the sensory experiments on Monday the 27th.

** 29/6 and 30/6: ** Careful analysis of the results showed that the HOWs chosen (the higher and lower levels) failed to generate any significant change in the responses to the WHATs. Moreover, it was observed that on an average the assessors have rated all the samples quite low and this proved to be a roadblock to the optimisation procedure. The team decided to look into the possible causes and arranged a meeting with Dr Peter and the other supervisors for discussing solutions. Retrospect with the assessors enabled us to understand that samples tasted bitter and they were also unable to distinguish the attributes among the samples. Careful analysis led us to conclude that the magnitude of temperature loss during serving was more than what we fathomed and this led to an added loss of flavour/causing bitterness.

The other problem identified was that the 40 assessors in our panel would have had different tea drinking habits and the relative low rating could have been due to the variations in their style of consumption of tea (addition of milk, sugar etc. in their beverage). Finding a way to keep a constant temperature for so many samples and ensuring that all the assessors receive samples at the same temperature was a tricky bit in our product development. One advantage of so many heads working on the same problem is that one of them is bound to come up with a solution. The idea of using a thermo flask was suggested by Witthawatt and we decided to conduct a mock panel among ourselves to ensure that the temperature and attributes of the tea do not change with time. = Click to Go back to main page =