The internship report of 2014-2015 describes all the difficulties and recommendations of every phase. A summary is made of all these difficulties to prevent the same mistakes are made twice.
During the research phase the team interviewed customers in order to find out the demands and problems. The first difficulty was that the chosen villages were not situated throughout the whole district, due to a bounding to a transportation budget. So the research did not cover the entire district. The team encountered some difficulties during the interviews as well: the customers did not always speak English and did not understand all the questions. The KITA students translated some questions, but it was not entirely clear if they translated correctly and if they did not implicate the ‘right’ answer while interviewing. Furthermore the customers could not answer any questions about income, because they simply had no idea about finances. The customers also preferred to chitchat and said ‘yes’, although they did not understand the questions. The questionnaires were time consuming and that is why not much results were gained. The team also missed out some important topics, like preferences for the new stove and how much they can afford on a new cookstove.
During the prototyping phase the first obstacle was a lack of clarity on the available budget for the making of the prototype and the available local materials. Secondly, there was no clear view on which materials would lie within the budget. Also the specifications of the materials were unclear, because different sources gave different ratios of the isolation materials and the mixtures of clay. There were also problems with the planning, because on advice of their supervisor the team first focused on the prototypes and in week 6 a process characterization took place. The consequence was that the team had insufficient knowledge about the needs of the customers and how the cookstove will be used. It was not a customer-driven process anymore. During the making process the team faced problems with the characteristics of the materials. They also had no (professional) tools to make all the moulds in the same size and shape, to mix the clay and to make the combustion chamber walls of the same thickness. Furthermore there were problems with measuring the sizes and temperatures, because they had no thermometers and tapelines. Because of limited time availability the team was not able to improve their own prototypes.
The whole prototyping phase took up a major part of the internship and the team encountered many difficulties and delays. There were culture related problems and problems with the facilities and the amount of available knowledge. There were also problems with stakeholders and it is important to set up agreements or contracts to make sure that the production process of the entire stove runs as steady and low-cost as possible. Because of the lack of time the team had no time to work on the sales phase of the project.
The recommendations of the team were taken into account when planning the activities.