Modular Van
Help local businesses to supply customers with good quality, fair food
The product of this Product Service System is the van. The design of the van came from a redesign of an existing van on the market, the NISSAN e-NV200 Electric Box Van. The reason for picking the van is because it fits some important requirements best. It is electric, which is in line with freshness of our brand. It can drive up to 123 km/h, which is important for when the van needs to pass a highway to get to certain locations. Lastly, it has a medium to large storage capacity, which allows the van to pick up all the produce in one go and it allows the van to ride around all day without having to resupply often. We redesigned the back box to create the most optimal van for The Local Food Van.
Design of the outside
Visiting a local store or farm is an experience in itself. The store owners know everything about their products and the stores have quite a cozy, warm feeling. Our van brings the local stores to people’s neighbourhood, and therefore it was important to recreate that local store experience in the design of the bus itself.
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This was achieved by several points. Firstly, a colour palette was selected which closely resembles local food. The green colours resemble nature, the dark purple and orange resemble the fresh food and the blue stands for fairness. These colours were incorporated in the design of the van, making it stand out and recognizable as well.
Secondly, the back of the van has two sides which open as wings. This way when the van is set up, it not only creates shade for the produce, but also makes it feel like a little market. On the bottom of the wings, information is placed about the local shops and products as well as the prices.
The Local Food Van logo is clearly visible on all sides and also has the same colors.
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Design of the inside
Considering the fluctuation of products per season and per local business, the priority of the storage system was for it to be modular. The design has 4 separating walls installed on each side. On all walls French cleats are installed to hold the baskets. On the most right section, induction plugs are installed to connect cooling boxes to. And on the most left section, a small space is reserved to store a foldable table and foldable steps. The foldable steps will help shorter people reach the upper baskets and the table will function as a selling platform on which a scale, bags and items could be placed. Mostly to accommodate the driver. The baskets can slide in and out and the cooling boxes can be taken out as well.
The baskets
The baskets are designed with the focus on modularity, transparency and sustainability. Not only can the baskets come in different height sizes, they are also modular themselves. They come with dividers that can be added on to create extra sections.
The dividers work with a simple slide-in mechanism, where you just slide it in the grooves of the basket. To take them out, you simply pull them upwards by the cut-out.
The front of the basket has a similar cut-out, which is not only for the purpose of easily pulling the basket out, but also to be able to see what is in the basket. Underneath it the label of the basket is attached, where you can read what is stored in the basket.
The baskets will be made of green HDPE (High-Density Polyethylene) recycled plastic. Since they are not black or very dark in color and they are made out of one plastic, they can still be recycled after use. They are also not made of a very light or transparent colour, which means they can be produced with recycled plastics. HDPE is used, because it is food safe, it is also used a lot for crates and piping, meaning it is resistant enough for our use case. HDPE can also be used for injection moulding. A possible place to get recycled HDPE pallets is Fortum.
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Furthermore, there is an option to add on cooling
elements. These are designed to slide in grooves in the walls, located above the french cleats. They would mostly be used to keep products cool in the summer season, because although greens do not need to be in a fridge, they will not stay as fresh under high temperatures.
Instructions
Maintenance
To improve the maintainability of The Local Food Van, quite some points were incorporated into the design, already from the very beginning.
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Firstly, point M5: Design Modular. One of the important topics that play a role during maintenance is designing modular. The baskets are designed to be modular, if one crate breaks, it can be replaced easily. Due to the fact that the design is modular, the layout can be different each week depending on the amount of products that are in stock. If an extra refrigerator is needed, then this can easily be inserted into the wall. Also, if one type of product is showing fungi (dutch: schimmels), then only that crate has to be taken out, not the entire van.
Secondly, M1: Use materials that do not prolong maintenance activities. The baskets are made of recycled plastics, which are easily cleanable and are resistant against corrosion.
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Thirdly, R1: Design-out moving parts. The valve has been designed in such a way that it can not fall down when customers are standing under it. Lastly the walls are designed for under stressed use. By making use of several walls the stress is divided. These points together optimize the maintainability of The Local Food Van.
Finally, the fridges need to get charged. When you insert a fridge to the wall, you do not want to struggle with connecting the plugs on the back side of the fridge. Therefore, a different charging system has been used, namely: induction. This same principle is applied in an electric toothbrush. One pin slides into another pin, and you are done. There is no need anymore to connect cables together.
