Production Plan

Table 1 shows the estimated costs for the production of the coffee machine and the designed pods. All raw materials, components and transportation costs are taken as an average price per market.  Alibaba [1], the B2B (business-to-business) e-commerce platform is the main online sourcing portal, through which the raw materials have been sourced.  

More calculations regarding the total price per machine and per pod were computed and analysed, predicting an average cost of 35,01 $ per machine and 0,03304 $  per a whole set of 5 capsules.  As for the production costs, the comparison of prices for labour hours on the market  estimated an average for the chosen cost of 13$/hour. [2]

The coffee machine is produced by injection moulding (see figure 1). The mould and materials are imported from China and the injection moulding takes place in Portugal. This is done to optimize the cost. After the injection moulding and incorporating all the elements of the coffee pods(fig 1), a quality control is carried out to ensure that the pods meat European standards. Finally, the pods are packaged and shipped.