Kitchen Sucker

This project was for a subsidiary of FUDA and involved developing and combining a number of technologies they had been working on to create a stove system. The technologies they were trying to showcase included: a rotary exhaust fan system, a light that keeps vegetables fresh, a UV disinfection system for plates and a touch controlled electric stove top designed for the fast cooking styles common in China.

My involvement on this project was as a consultant in various aspects of the development and embodiment of the final outcome as well as in a site visit to inspect design realization and manufacture quality. I was not a core part of this project as it was ongoing from before I arrived and is even now still in refinement.

I think this project is not very interesting which is partly why I was not very involved. However, it is a great example of the differing needs between markets. First and foremost is the lack of an oven, something that very few Chinese households have. The features which were included are also interesting. In China fresh food is very important and often meat will have been killed hours if not minutes before being cooked. They prefer not to refrigerate things if it can be avoided as it is said to change flavor, so things like this LED system are rather important. Similarly everyone is concerned about cleanliness of things that they eat off, there is a zero second policy¹ in China, so a solution like UV plate disinfecting is a key feature. Neither of these things would be included in a western version of this project and of course it would almost certainly have a oven as well.

Another way in which this project had an impact on me was in the prototyping. In the west, we continuously talk about how poor the quality of Chinese manufacturing is, but the reality it is only like this because the western companies push the budgets so low. In fact, the amount of highly skilled labour available in China is disproportionately large in comparison to most western countries and the level of manufacture quality available, if you pay a humane amount, is far higher than most factories in the USA or Australia can offer.

In this project FUDA, our client, was prototyping continuously and often members of the team would go and stay with them for a few days as they prototype-stormed to have a better inclusion of engineering and design with a faster turn around. What was really impressive is that the 2 people doing the prototyping were so fast they could make accurate, functional mock-ups in an afternoon and have production grade prototypes in a day or two. Before going to China, I had never seen quality and speed like this in my life.



¹Derived from the "10 second rule", which states that food that has been dropped on the ground is still safe to consume if you pick it up within 10 seconds of dropping it.