M&Ms AND SKITTLES

The Client And The Brief

Skittles and M&Ms are two of the most recognisable candies around the world, and both are owned by global confectionary giant Mars Wrigley. Design to Production engaged Concept Evolution as its design partner, to work closely with their team to develop these highly sophisticated machines, for both Skittles & M&Ms.

The initial brief wasn’t to just build your average vending machine. There was one key problem that needed to be addressed. Customers kept asking: where can I get individual flavours? The answer was a Smart Vending Machine that let people pick the flavours they wanted and "Create the Rainbow" for themselves.

Once the Skittles machines had proven themselves in market, Mars Wrigley then issued a new brief to the design and development team to adapt the platform to dispense the full range of M&Ms.

The Challenge

A shop assistant can scoop single flavours all day. A traditional vending machine cannot improvise. To solve the key problem outlined in the brief, the machine had to hold every flavour separately, let a customer choose through a touch screen, and accurately dispense a made-to-order cup with a completely automated system. That meant designing the dispensing, the delivery and the suite of sensors entirely from scratch and making all of it reliable enough to run completely unattended.

M&Ms brought some extra challenges. They differ in size, weight and uniformity, and as a chocolate product they are also more sensitive to heat. The dispensing mechanisms and internal layout that worked for Skittles could not simply be reused, so the machine had to be optimised to suit the new product while keeping the overall platform intact.

What We Designed And Built

In partnership with Design to Production, Concept Evolution developed a fully custom machine built around eight individual flavour hoppers and a fully automated delivery system operated through a touch screen. Extensive research and development went into every part of the machine. This included:

• Custom injection moulded parts, extrusions and vacuum formings

• Custom lighting and printed glass

• Eight product hoppers, each with its own motorised dispensing      mechanism

• A three-stage cup delivery system

• A full suite of sensors and a large array of internally mounted      hardware

For M&Ms, we worked from the proven Skittles platform and adapted it to the new product. This involved:

• Custom dispensing mechanisms suited to the variable size and      consistency of M&Ms

• A modified internal structure for better thermal management, so the      product stayed stable inside the machine

Key Design Decisions

Eight separate hoppers, one per flavour, keeping every unique flavour separated right up to the moment it is dispensed. This is what gives users the ability to "pick your own" mix of only their favourite flavours, rather than a standard pre-mixed packet, and makes our Smart Vending Machine so special.

Motorised dispensing at each hopper gives the machine precise control over how much of each flavour it releases, and the dispensing duration can be remotely controlled to suit different products if the hoppers are switched.

A three-stage cup delivery system handles the cup from start to finish, so the machine can present a filled cup cleanly without a person involved.

For M&Ms, reusing the Skittles platform rather than starting again kept the proven parts of the design and focused the new work where the product actually differed, in dispensing and thermal management.

Capabilities Used

The complex nature of this project drew on all our experience and full range of our services, including:

• New Product Development (/new-product-development)

• Design and Engineering (/design-engineering)

• Visual Design and Product Visualisation      (/product-visualisation-visual-design)

• Prototyping and Manufacturing (/prototyping-manufacturing-services)

The design, documentation, assembly and testing were carried out in partnership with Design to Production here in Sydney. Manufacturing of all custom components, including sheet metal, aluminium and plastic extrusion, injection moulded parts, vacuum formed parts were produced through a network of local and offshore manufacturing partners.

The Concept To Production Pathway

Due to the complexity of the machines, from both a hardware and software perspective, the overall development time was longer than a typical project, but the general development process followed our usual path from idea to finished product. The brief was reviewed and refined, concepts were developed in form and function, and the design was proven through extensive prototyping and testing before the machines went into production. The successful rollout of the Skittles machine then established a very solid platform for development of the M&Ms machine, which reused proven mechanics that could be re-used, and re-engineered the parts that needed to change.

The Outcome

The Skittles machines were deployed in the hundreds across North America. That success is what led Mars Wrigley to commission the M&Ms adaptation, taking a design already working in market and extending it to a second product without rebuilding it from the ground up.