[Brielle Buckler]

Do you ever look at something you own and think, “I wonder how they make this thing?” Well, since you have been learning about production and production processes in this module, you are going to investigate that very question here.

For this discussion, go to the YouTube channel How Things Are Made, or some other site where you can see how things are actually made. Select a product or thing, and watch the video and/or read the information provided.

• Share with your classmates which product or thing you researched (please be sure to provide a link to the video or article, too).
• Briefly explain the type of process used to make the product or thing (refer back to your course materials for the terminology).
• Which part(s) of the process surprised you the most?—which part of the video/article made you think, “Ah, so that’s how they do it!”?

——–

In order to receive full credit for this assignment, all components of this assignment are due by 11:59pm ET on Sunday, April 23, 2023. You should first contribute a thoughtful post of your own before viewing/commenting on the posts of others. You must respond meaningfully to at least two classmates to receive full credit for this assignment.

This assignment is worth a total of ten (10) points — 6 possible points for your original post, and up to 2 points for each of the two responses to your classmates’ posts. Please reference our Discussion Rubric for more information, and to this guide from MSSU to learn more about what it means to respond meaningfully to a classmates’ post.

• This topic was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Brielle Buckler. Reason: Republish
• This topic was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by Brielle Buckler.

[Nickos]

Producing Clean Drinking Water

I chose to research clean drinking water since it is used in every day life.

The 45 minute water filtering and production begins as follows:

1. Water flows from reservoir to treatment plant through a pipe into a hole. Inside the hole, large debris is first removed using a metal grill.
2. Water then flows through a pumping station where it will go through a preliminary screening that will remove fish, garbage, grass, and other debris using a giant revolving screen.
3. Next, a low pressure pump will move the water to the treatment plant where activated carbon is added to the water to absorb contaminants such as solvents and pesticides. This gets rid of the certain taste and odors.
4. Water will now flow through some mixing tanks where aluminum sulfate is also added, which acts as a coagulant. The aluminum sulfate will form small sticky globs which impurities such as bacteria and mud will stick to.
5. The next mixing tank contains polymer and pipes will inject the water with super fine particles of sand (micro sand). The polymer will clump the sand and they will stick to the previous globs, weighing them down.
6. In the next tank, all of the globs and clumps will sink to the bottom due to their weight.
7. When the water is clear, it will go through a series of filters that contain anthracite (type of coal) and sand. This will filter out remaining particles.
8. Chlorine is then added to kill off germs and bacteria and silicate is added to prevent calcium build up.
9. Water samples are then sent to labs to test for quality testing and monitoring.

 

For me, I thought the most surprising aspect of the water filtering process was the chemical additions. I always thought that water filtration only included a series of fine filters, I was unaware that we added so many different chemicals that clump the debris, sanitize the germs, and remove taste/odors. I am also glad that tests are routinely ran for quality assurance and control since clean water is critical for our health and daily lives.

[Taylen Johnson]

great post very informational

 

[Shomari]

I did not know that they put in certain chemicals to get rid of dirt and debri in our drinking water, I really thought it was type of filtration through a tube or something.

[Adrian Forrester]

I found a video on How Things Are Made that showcases the production process of aluminum cans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87Jc3yrPfks

The process used to make aluminum cans is called deep drawing, which is a type of metalworking process. The process starts with a large aluminum coil being fed into a machine that cuts it into small disks called “blanks.” The blanks are then transferred to another machine that deep draws them into the shape of a can. The deep drawing process involves pulling the blank into a die cavity using a punch until it takes the shape of a can. The cans are then trimmed and washed before being coated with a layer of protective material.

The part of the process that surprised me the most was the use of a high-speed camera to capture the formation of the can during the deep drawing process. It was fascinating to see how the punch pushes the blank into the die cavity to create the can’s shape. Additionally, the coating process, which involves spraying a layer of protective material on the can, was also interesting to watch. Overall, this video provided an excellent insight into how aluminum cans are made.

[Osman Goni Rifat]

How Pizza’s Are Made

The kinds of procedures they use to make pizza is operational management.
1. First flour, salt, sugar, yeast, oil, eggs and other ingredients are brought to the factory by distributors.
2. All the ingredients are measured out and put in a humongous bowl starting with sugar, yeast and water following by eggs, salt and flour.
3. A large mixer is put to work and it kneads the dough for the required amount of time.
4. After the dough is done kneading it it put onto a conveyer belt and is put to rest allowing the
yeast to do its thing by rising the dough.
5. Then the workers automate the machines to pull out different size of doughs at different
weights varying from small, medium and large pizzas and giving them their round shape.
6. Then different sized doughs are put onto trays by robots where the machines make sure the
dough balls dont stick together.
7. After all this, the dough goes to a chiller where they are chilled at 38 degrees Fahrenheit which
slows down the proofing process.
8. Once the dough is ready to go, it is delivered to the franchises along with cheese and toppings to
be served to the customers.
9. Once at the store, pizza chefs pull out the dough from the freezer and makes the pizza by hand.
10. First the dough is covered in cornmeal and then pulled by hand to spread it out evenly.
11. After it is done a thin layer of tomato sauce is put on the pizza and finished off with even layers
of cheese and other toppings.
12. Once its ready its put into the scorching hot oven and 5-7 minutes later the pizza is ready to be
served.
Out of all these over the head procedures the most surprising to me was that how perfectly round the pizza is even being made by hand and the pizza getting super fluffy in the oven.

[Shomari]

I love dominos pizza, it was quite amazing to see the craftmanship that goes into making a pizza from such a popular company

[Justin]

There production really makes sense to why they are able to mass produced. I also love dominos! The machinery really amazes me how it can make sure everything is equally produced.

[Tenzin Lhamo]

Hi Osman,

I really enjoyed learning about the process of how pizza is made. Its amazing to see the efficiency of how the pizza is made as well. I always took dominos for granted but now I understand why its such a large chain and how they operated on such a big scale. I’m wondering how long it took them to make this process as perfect as it is today.

[Juana Bazan]

Hi Osman,

I enjoy learning about the process of how Domino’s Pizza is made and how it has changed over time. One of my favorite to go pizza places is domino pizza and it amazed me to see that nowadays machines can do anything.

[Taylen Johnson]

Awesome post! It demonstrates how a big company can effectively make so many great pizzas

[Emely Gutierrez]

I chose to search up how coffee is made.

1.The process of making coffee all comes from the plantation.

2. After the planting it takes at least three to five years for the trees to grow the fruit.

3. Once the fruit is taken from then you would extract the fruit to take out the coffee beans.

4. You would use the dry method as they call it.

5. Beans go through the wet process.

6. Put into water- filled fermentation tanks.

7. They are rinsed then dried.

8. Final step is milling.

What I found more surprising was that coffee beans come from a fruit and are extracted. I really thought that. coffee beans just come from the bags. I did not process farther the actual process to create a coffee bean. Which takes like 3-5 years for the the fruit to see anything from coffee

 

[Taylen Johnson]

https://youtu.be/Z-zR1SgrM-w

The process of making hot dogs includes using trimmings from pork, beef, and chicken, as well as added food starch, salt, mustard, Mars rock pieces, corn syrup, and water to create a flavorless paste. The mixture is then stuffed into plastic wrap and twisted into chains of 10 hot dogs. The hot dogs are drenched in pig sweat to enhance their flavor and cooled down before packaging. Despite the efficiency of the process, vegans will still complain about it.

I was kind of surprised how the hotdogs were a liquidy paste before it was done and how they drench it in pig sweat that was kind of nasty to me.

[Shomari]

How Underwater Constructions are Made

1. Pneumatic Cassons- Used to compress air to keep water from seeping in my maintaining equal pressure. Material that workers dig out is sent up and out through a muck tube. Eventually , the caissons reaches bedrock and can be filled with concrete.
2. Cofferdams- Is a temporary enclosure that keeps water out to create a dry working environment. Constructed by using dirt, rock or steel.
3. Driven Piles – Is a large vertical steel column that is hammered into the soil or rock by a massive machine

What I found most interesting during my research is the blueprints of these constructions. All of these constructions are made by engineers and even chemists. I always wonder how tunnels are build underwater and how people are even able to do such a thing. These construction also cost a hefty penny and takes almost four years or more to build.

https://youtu.be/DpwUud0RaVQ

 

[Justin]

Ice cream lollipops are made using machines that are mainly specialized for making and sealing the product. This is called automated popsicle production.
1.The ice cream is poured into molds

2.The molds are places in popsicle making machines where cooling methods are used.They use nitrogen as well.
3.when the ice aream isfrozen the molds are removed from the machine. The popsicle is also removed
The nitrogen surprised me because I never knew that machines do so much at once especially with these type of components just to make ice cream.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by Justin.

[Tenzin Lhamo]

mistake

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by Tenzin Lhamo.

[Tenzin Lhamo]

Tequila: How It’s Made

The product I researched is Tequila. After watching the following video, I learned much about the process and work that goes into making a fine bottle of tequila. The type of production process followed in the making of tequila is the Batch Production method. In this method, groups of similar items are produced stage by stage together before moving on to the next stage (due to different types of tequila; blanco, reposado, anejo, etc.). In this method, there is also a combination of workers and machinery. The first step requires physical labor from the farmers who grow the Pina plant then chop them up into smaller chunks and finally dump them into an autoclave to roast. Afterward, the heat turns the starch compounds inside the Pina into a sweet juice that then has to go through the fermentation process to turn into alcohol. The fermentation process starts in a lab where yeast is added to the sweet pina juice, sugar is then broken down by the yeast. After the fermentation process, comes the less-human-more-machine process, the liquid is then transferred to huge vats located in their manufacturing facility that is close to their lab/farming space. In the huge vats that the liquid is now in, they start their next process, boiling and distilling. While the vats are heating up, the alcohol inside boils off and turns to vapor which condenses through a pipeline on top of the vats, connecting that vat to another where just the pure alcohol vapor goes into. This is the distillation process and after a second round of it, some water is added to lessen the harshness of the alcohol. Towards the end, the rest of the process is more on the physical labor side where workers double-check the final products and apply the cork and serial numbers, etc. Their process layout is a well one, arranging workflow around the production process, similar tasked workers grouped together. The farmers’ pina being the source of raw material, the scientists in the lab working on the fermentation process, the machines boiling and distilling,  to the workers at the end double checking product and adding the last marks on the bottle.

[Juana Bazan]

How is bubble gum made?
The type of process they use to make bubble gum is operation management. Below are the steps on how to make bubble gum:

1. It starts with a gum base that makes the gum chewy, that used to come from tree resent and today it comes from synthetic, rubber, and plastic residue
2. The gum base is put into a mixture, and color and flavoring are added.
3. Then comes the glucose syrup a sweetener (liquid) it is poured down to keep the gum soft.
4. Next, Dextrose is added to a powder sweater, and it is mixed for 20 minutes. The mixture is ready when it reaches the consistency of bread dough.
5. The dough is transferred by cart to a machine called the pre-strider.
6. The machine squeezes the dough through a narrow opening like squeezing toothpaste from a tube. Transforms into thin manageable strips.
7. Then it goes through the striders, it squeezes down to the actual width of a piece of bubble gum.
8. This striction heats the gum, the next stop is the cooling chamber for 15 minutes, 3-7 degrees Celsius
9. Finally, it enters the machine “Cut and Wrap”. The machine process 900 pieces of gum per minute
10. In the last step of packaging, the bubble gum moves down to a scale that automatically weighs down the right amount per tub. The tub is sealed with plastic to keep the gum fresh

What surprised me the most was the material that is used to make gum chewy. Which is now rubber and plastic residue. I do not know how to feel about that.

The past of the “Cut and Warp” made me think “Ah, so that’s how they do it”. I have always wondered how they can package and seal small pieces of gum in large quantities.  I always thought it was done manually.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by Juana Bazan.

[Nickos]

Hi Syed, great summary of the steps on how to make potato chips! I didn’t realize it took so many steps to make something so simple. Since chips are a food product, I assume they follow regulations that the FDA has in place. I’d like to understand more about the quality assurance steps that are in place and the standards they follow for batch testing, I wonder what makes a batch “pass” or “fail.”

[Adrian Forrester]

hey syed, great post. I never knew how much really goes into making potato chips. I understand this process is due to the high production rate as opposed to someone making them themselves.  Its also kind of scary to see how artificially and mechanically Chips are made.

 

[Tenzin Lhamo]

Hi Syed,

Thanks for the post on potato chips. I’ve always thought of it to be a simple process but now I can see that it requires a lot of steps. Something I never thought about are how it needs to be a certain thickness or that it goes through a brushing machine. It definitely makes me realize that even the most simple products have many steps in order to create a final product. It would be interesting to see who even came up with the product idea in the first place!

[Juana Bazan]

Hi Syed,

I enjoy learning how potato chips are made. What amazed me the most is that potato chips are still made from natural potatoes and they must be 24 hours old or it can affect the way the potato chips look “black spots”. Thank you for the breakdown!

[Taylen Johnson]

Great post! It’s interesting to me how potato chips are created.

[Author]

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