June 7, 2007

Dear Group of Interested Parties in The Arial Home Initiative,

Our current Arial Home trip to Ensenada, Mexico has been quite an adventure.   This past Monday (which seems like weeks ago) a team of 10 of us were up at 2:30 am Ensenada time to head to O’Hare airport in time for our early flight.   We arrived in San Diego at 10:30 am, and made it to Ensenada by 4:00 pm on Monday, June 4.   We immediately headed to the warehouse that had been donated for our use to set up the Arial Home manufacturing plant.   After eleven and a half hours of traveling, we were hoping everything was cleared out and ready for our use.

Instead, here is what we encountered in what was supposed to be totally empty space:

Notice the expression on Ed Caplan’s face, lower right, and my gazing at the stack of doors in the background as we pondered how we would set up a manufacturing plant when there was no space available for our very large equipment.  

Worse still, none of our equipment had cleared customs at the San Diego/Tijuana border, so we had nothing to install.  The robotic arm, which was the critical piece of the project, was not even on a truck. It was still sitting on the floor in a warehouse in San Diego.

Although we had out doubts that we could ever turn this crowded space into a high tech panel manufacturing plant, just 26 and a half hours later, after some major miracles, the first Arial Home panel came out of the mold ready to be a part of a new home for a poor family. 

It was a total team effort with very little sleep and a lot of physical effort.

The panel mold equipment is large and heavy.  Somehow the owner of the warehouse, got it into this tight space at 1:00 am in the morning, just after we finished clearing out all the dune buggies and automotive engines and parts. 

We were soon ready to start manufacturing metal insulated panels in Ensenada. 

Here are images of the team at work….

Tom and Jane watching the accuracy of the robotic arm as it guides the foam spray while Michael Saydak checks the hose path.  The four summer interns (3 just graduated from Deerfield High School, one a sophomore in college, Alan Mellovitz) have been incredible workers, with not a single complaint about the 18 hour work days.

Danielle Pirelli sitting on two of the 20 drums of chemicals required to make 340 panels for 10 Arial Homes.

The team that was able to transform a crowded Ensenada warehouse into a sophisticated, robotic manufacturing plant almost overnight.  The photo includes the four workers from Ensenada who will be full time employees from now on.

 In time, this plant will produce an average of 350 panels per week, enough for ten new Arial Homes.  We are already up to a rate of 4 panels per hour.

The Mexican workers have adapted quickly to the techniques necessary to manufacture the panels.  While it remains to be seen what happens after we leave on Sunday, we are optimistic that this new concept in micro-manufacturing in poor areas of Third World countries is going to work.

The Arial Home Initiative is a Project of The Arial Foundation, Chicago, IL

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