Portable Pop-up Living Module

Business Plan

Team Lean2Designs:

Aaron Black

Sheila Ramamurthy

Ariel Sundel

Robert Walsh

Summary

Natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes can make thousands of families suddenly homeless, creating a sudden and acute need for effective temporary housing. Available emergency shelters are typically adaptations of structures designed for other purposes, including military camps or recreational structures, resulting in solutions that have a variety of drawbacks making them expensive, cramped, and difficult to deploy.

The Portable Pop-Up Living Module is optimized to meet the particular needs of relief agencies and the families who need emergency shelter. This structure incorporates an innovative design that is stable, efficient and easy to deploy, while being cost effective and compact for easy transport and storage. The efficient design also results in an effective model for fabrication that reduces production costs and makes this shelter an affordable and attractive alternative to other designs, while still producing a reasonable profit. We intend to develop and market this design as the new standard in emergency housing structures. There is also the potential for eventual adaptation of the basic structure design to suit the needs of other disasters or viable non-disaster related markets.

I.  Business opportunity

1.  Business objective

Our objective is to generate a profit while helping relief agencies and governments meet the temporary housing needs that result from large scale natural disasters, by mass producing and selling an affordable and easily deployed temporary shelter that is an improvement over any other shelter available for a comparable price. We intend this basic structure to be a platform from which other similarly designed products addressing other markets can also be developed.

2.  Product Description

The Pop-Up Living Module is a fabric and lightweight frame structure that has a roof, and walls of durable lightweight fabric, a floor of heavier more abrasion resistant fabric, ventilation screens and a supporting frame of fiberglass poles. Unique features include the geometry and the mechanism for erecting the structure. The shape feels spacious, has an extended central ceiling, which improves ventilation over more typical dome shaped tent structures

Unlike tension-based structures currently on the market our product is not complex or difficult to assemble with many components. Our simple deployment process is ideal for users who are coping with the sudden and unexpected loss of a home. The deployment of our structure is unique in that the frame is laid out flat and then a simple hand operated winch or ratchet (included) pulls the opposing sides together, causing the frame to rise in the middle. It is straightforward, rapid and effective.

3.  Market Analysis

The market size was estimated by researching current data of homes destroyed by hurricanes. ADD MORE

With a market survey, we tested user preferences with respect to four different attributes of our product, shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Attributes and Levels Tested in Market Survey

Attributes / Levels
Price / $375 / $515
$450 / $600
Floor Space / 135 sq. ft. / 212 sq. ft.
173 sq. ft. / 257 sq. ft.
Weight / 10 lbs / 30 lbs
20 lbs / 40 lbs
Deployment Time / 5 minutes / 15 minutes
10 minutes / 20 minutes

The results of the survey determine the following relationships between the various attributes and the utility of the product:

The market survey determined that the optimal values of the product attributes to maximize profit are:

Optimal Level of Product Attributes

Attribute / Optimal Level
Price / $600
Floor Space / 257 sq. ft.
Weight / 25 lbs
Deployment Time / 9 minutes

4.  Capital and personnel resources

II.  Financial Data

1. Capital equipment and supply list

Fixed Cost
Start Up Cost
design costs / Research and Development / 140000
equipment / Pipe Bending (dollars) / 20000
water jetting (dollars) / 30000
silk screening painting (dollars) / 30000
sewing machines (dollars) / 2000
Facilities / estimated (dollars)
Rent (dollars) / 200000
Utilities (dollars) / 20000
Insurance (dollars) / 35000
Transportation Costs / Truck Fleets / 100000
Overall Fixed Cost (dollars) / 577000

Use this and the BOM to explain what we are using to make our stuff

2. Breakeven analysis

Breakeven Analysis
Investment / 58035160
Yearly Profit / 103925812
Salvage / 10
Periods / 0.584872762
PV Profit / $58,035,150.34
PV Salvage / $9.66
Difference / $0.00

3. Three year projections for pro-forma income and cost

Profit

Revenue and Cost

NPV analysis of 3 years

year 1 / year 2 / year 3 / year 4 / year 5
Investment Cost / -$188,490,871.92 / -$182,940,918.24 / -$177,705,112.88 / -$172,765,673.86 / -$168,105,825.73
Operating Cost / -$226,948.15 / -$226,948.15 / -$226,948.15 / -$226,948.15 / -$226,948.15
-$188,717,820.07 / -$183,167,866.39 / -$177,932,061.03 / -$172,992,622.01 / -$168,332,773.88
Rent Income / $144,049,459.83 / $151,251,933.18 / $166,377,128.14 / $191,333,696.32 / $229,600,435.37
Salvage / $31.91 / $30.96 / $30.05 / $29.20 / $28.40
$144,049,491.74 / $151,251,964.14 / $166,377,158.20 / $191,333,725.52 / $229,600,463.77
Total NPV / -$44,668,328.33 / -$31,915,902.26 / -$11,554,902.84 / $18,341,103.51 / $61,267,689.89

4. Assumptions upon which projections were based

need to know
useful life of product / 10
investment cost / -58035160
annual opperating cost / -255000
annual income (revenue) / 161853972
salvage value / 10

And a .06 interest rate

III. Supporting Documents

1. Existing Patents

Upon research of patents issued in the last 20 years, it became clear that the collapsible tent/shelter is one of the largest competitors to The Portable Pop-Up Living Module. Searching the US patent office (USPTO) for collapsible structures produced the most relevant results to this design. The 155 results could be narrowed down to three that correlated best with this design and are listed below:

Self erecting and collapsible structure: This patent is similar to the idea of a collapsible housing structure for disaster relief. The design is a flexible structure that can be twisted up by coils to form a compact package. The idea is similar in the sense that the shelter is supposed to be compact when packaged and easy to assemble (Louie).

One-touch self assembling collapsible tent frame: This is also similar to the idea of a portable structure and the self erecting structure, but uses sliding joints for safety (Jang).

Survival Shelter: This is made for people in distress in rugged terrain and is inflatable. It is light, so it is easy to carry. Also, this design is made for extreme temperatures (Bixler).

Although many designs exist for portable or collapsible structures, there currently is nothing on the market that serves all the needs of the proposed Portable Pop-Up Living Module. Team Lean2Designs has created a housing structure that not only is portable, but it is easily deployed, cost effective, and gives the occupants a sense of home.

2. Technical Analysis and Benchmarking

The structure was analyzed by creating a computer model in the Adams simulation software and by using a simplified model of the structure it as a curved beam. The maximum stresses were minimized by using hollow fiberglass tube 0.5 inch in diameter with a thickness of 0.125 inches.

To get to the desired height of 96 inches, 1500 pounds of force needs to be applied to one end of the structure. Ergonomic analysis shows that for the safety of the smallest and weakest user, the ratchet must have a conversion factor of at least 100 pounds per pound of force exerted by the user.