Modular Beverage Machine Assembly for Function Variety at Lower Cost
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Solution Overview
Problem
The development and manufacturing of beverage production machines using pre-portioned ingredients like capsules or pods is complex and costly, requiring a solution to create versatile machines with varying functions while minimizing production costs.
Innovation Solution
A modular approach involving identical core units with control circuitry and beverage production modules, mounted on different base platforms with varying functions, allowing for the use of pre-proportioned ingredient batches and efficient resource management through interconnected control circuitries for coordinated operation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If beverage production machines are designed with different functions and beverage delivery capacities, then consumer versatility is improved, but development and manufacturing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The beverage production machine is divided into a common core unit and separate base platforms. The core unit contains identical components (beverage production module, control circuitry, ingredient batch housing) that can be mounted on different base platforms to create machines with varying functions and capacities, thereby reducing development and manufacturing complexity while maintaining consumer versatility.
Solution Approach 2:
The core unit is designed as a universal module that can be mounted on multiple different base platforms. This allows a single core unit design to serve multiple beverage production functions by simply changing the base platform, reducing the need to develop entirely different machine architectures for different beverage types.
2Adaptability or versatility
If multiple beverage production functions are integrated into different machines, then consumer choice is improved, but production costs increase
Solution Approach 1:
By segmenting the machine into a standardized core unit and variable base platforms, the patent enables mass production of identical core units that can be efficiently manufactured and then configured for different beverage functions through platform selection, thereby reducing overall production costs while maintaining a wide range of beverage options.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of modularity by making the core unit interchangeable across different base platforms. This allows manufacturers to produce core units to a single specification and then adapt them to different functions through platform configuration, reducing per-unit production costs while expanding beverage option ranges.
Data Source
AI summary
A modular method of manufacturing a set of beverage production machines with different beverage-related functions. The machines are designed for producing a beverage on the basis of pre-portioned ingredient packages. The method includes providing a plurality of identical core units having control circuitry and a beverage production module for housing an ingredient package and feeding a liquid to the interior of the ingredient package, providing a plurality of different base platforms that differ as to beverage production functions, and manufacturing a set of different beverage production machines by mounting respectively at least one of the core units on a top surface of one of the differing base platforms while also mounting water reservoirs on the base platforms.