Even if the workshop would be using slaves era to run, the life of a slave was still a life too. Anyway, since Su Tang could put in a little thought and solve this danger, there was no reason for her not to.
If Su Tang hadn’t said all these things Luo Xingchen really wouldn’t have even thought of this possibility.
But now that Su Tang did say it, her stomach flipped with nausea and she covered her mouth and said, “Ughh, stop, stop. This image is too graphic.”
Su Tang rolled her eyes and snorted, “You’re learning.”
Then she continued, “Anyway, all we need to do is add this bucket elevator and then the personnel here in the workshop can be further reduced. On the one hand, it will reduce the labor costs while, on the other hand, it will also increase the secrecy of our business.”
After all, they were planning to use vegetables and technologies no one else in this country was using to make their sauces so, the fewer people involved the better. They would be able to keep the secrets longer that way.
In Su Tang’s plan, by using this method, they wouldn’t need more than ten workers and a manager in order to completely digest all the output of their five farms. Moreover, this one workshop should be enough to provide for the entire northern market.
This was Su Tang’s so-called “Semi-automated processing workshop” plan, and the efficiency was self-evident.
As Luo Xingchen listened to Su Tang laying out her plans, she could only feel ashamed. They were both women ah, and Su Tang was even much younger than her, but how could there be such a big difference? How did this little girl’s brain grow?
“Demon, ah. Tang, you’re too devilishly smart. How can you have so many ideas in that brain of yours? But if you connect this machine to the waterwheel won’t there be an excessive amount of wear?”
Luo Xingchen felt this was a brilliant idea, but she was still had a few concerns. Did Su Tang’s plan already account for the issues she could think of?
“Take a look right here.” Su Tang pointed to a spot on the blueprint. “There is a link between the waterwheel and the meat grinder which can be uncoupled to avoid the wear and tear that would be caused by leaving the meat grinder running day and night.”
The place Su Tang was pointing to was where the handle of the manual meat grinder was linked to the waterwheel via screws. By unscrewing the screws it would allow the workers to uncouple the waterwheel from the meat grinder when it was not in use. This would allow the machine to avoid the wear and tear of being run day and night.
“I see. Anyway, once these things are built we can take another look, I trust they will work as you say. But, another question, here in the north our rivers usually freeze when the temperatures drop. Won’t we be unable to use this waterwheel during the winter months?” Luo Xingchen brought up the thing that concerned her the most. After all, from what she knew, the winters were very cold in this area. Not only would the Qing River freeze, it would probably freeze completely solid.
“Well, we can just remove the waterwheel from the river before winter arrives, or just directly allow it to freeze since the ice probably won’t damage the wheel. If we still need the meat grinder to run during the winter, we can just switch to manual labor.” Su Tang replied.
In fact, the waterwheel was considered a great tool for the people of this era, but here in the north where rivers often froze, it wasn’t considered very valuable. Meanwhile, in the south, it was much more widely used because they didn’t need to worry about the cold.
Since the ancient people had thought of it, Su Tang had also considered this problem. Thus, she had designed this machine so that the place where the waterwheel and the meat grinder were connected wasn’t completely flush. Instead, there were a few grooves where the meat grinder could be converted to be used manually after the waterwheel was decoupled.
“However, our sauces are seasonal products, so we may not even need to run this workshop during the winter months for the immediate future.” Su Tang had chosen to use a waterwheel for power mainly because she knew that their tomato and chili sauces would be seasonal products that they wouldn’t be able to make more of in the winter anyway.
Once the crops stopped producing the workshop would be able to stop working as well. If there were any leftover vegetables to be processed after the river froze, they would be able to temporarily turn it to manual and let the laborers finish things. No matter what, there would definitely be more solutions than problems.
Su Tang looked at Luo Xingchen and asked, “How is it? Do you understand everything?”
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tl begging corner:
