508: Engineering Serves

Beth-El Mission is a farmworker ministry in Wimauma, Florida. Their mission is to provide food for both food-insecure families and migrant farmworkers in their community. Our objective was to give Beth-El a solution for distributing their dried goods. 

Beth-El has two key issues: lifting 50-pound bags of dried goods and giving out even amounts of food. Lifting these large bags of dried goods is an issue because most of their workers are elderly volunteers. Giving out uneven amounts of food can make the problem worse, and as a result, families may go without food. Some families rely fully on Beth-El’s aid for their weekly meals, meaning they may go without food some days if the food quantities aren’t consistent.  

To solve these issues, we designed a two-system solution that targets the issues with Beth-El’s distribution process. To resolve the lifting issue, we set up a lifting system allowing volunteers to easily lift and transport the dried goods. The updated distribution system allows Beth-El to have better portion control. This means that Beth-El can give out fairer portions of food. These solutions were assessed in simulated environments like those at Beth-El. Instead of designing these systems, they were bought from outside sources. This allowed the team to focus on the optimization process for Beth-El, rather than the design of the physical items. 

Besides the main concerns of lifting and distribution, Beth-El also wanted to keep a community environment for their volunteers because they are worried that reducing the community environment will lead to a reduction in volunteers. The solution is to place several volunteers at every station. This will allow them to converse easily, meeting Beth-El’s desire for a community focused environment.