A TIME STUDY OF THE PASTELLE MAKING PROCESS: AN INVESTIGATION AIMED AT REDUCING LABOUR AND TIME

Abstract

Pastelles are a seasonal staple enjoyed primarily at Christmas time by Trinidadians. At present, pastelle production is limited to home cooks for personal consumption and/or low volume sales (output of 6 to 20 dozens based on demand) as well as established catering companies whose output goes up to the hundreds of dozens. Regardless of the production scale, pastelle making has been a manual process involving long hours and laborious repetitive tasks to achieve the output. The ultimate goal is to design, build and test a prototype to assist pastelle producers with their output. For this project, a time study of the processes involved was conducted by timing a few different pastelle makers to identify the average time taken for the various processes involved. From this study, it was determined that a powered press would assist the pastelle maker by reducing their effort and increase their consistency of the pressed dough. The mechanized pastelle press was created with a folding plate. User testing showed that the production time of pastelles increased, but there was a decrease in the energy input on pastelle makers. Hence, they could have made more pastelles by using the mechanism by reducing their energy input to manually press the dough. The folding plate also increased the folding time required to seal the pastelle. The results also showed that the production time reduced for two users, as their user time increased with the mechanized pastelle press. Hence, as their learning curve increased with the machine their production time reduced.