The Brief: Redesign a household kitchen item / tool with an improvement to the conventional material it is usually constructed of.

Design Considerations: Use CES Edupack resource to study the materials and evaluate the cost of production / manufacture. Use Solidworks and 3D Studio Max for virtual development and rendering of work. Research into the usage and product / market research should be provided of the chosen product. At least one material of the original should be different in the new design. Submission of a Product Registration Form is mandatory.

Process: After a thorough exploration of existing kitchen tools / aides, the pizza cutter was chosen to iterate upon. Research on existing pizza cutters was done in order to understand it’s usage and the properties / characteristics of the commonly used material for manufacture. Also study and understanding of the working mechanism, a simple cheap pizza cutter was dismantled. After converging on the market target audience, new material variations was researched and selected for the blade. Ergonomic studies, especially hand percentiles aided in the understanding and development of the new design.

Outcome: Safe Slice - A pizza slicer targeted to be used by the Professionals in Food and Hospitality Sector (Restaurants, Cafes, Hotels, Chefs etc.). The material selected for the blade was changed from the conventional Stainless Steel to Zirconia, which is more durable and maintainable but a little more expensive. The design also included a modification to the shape and added a safety feature, that is, the in-built socket the blade slides into, akin to that of a swiss knife.