We did intuitive analysis initially and came up the strategy at the beginning of the game. Tap here to review the details. Management trusts you will be able to effectively Responsiveness at Littlefield Technologies Reflecting on the simulation exercise, we have made both correct and incorrect decisions. The mission of our team is to complete all aspects of the team assignment on time and to the full requirements set forth by Professor McNickle. 105 We had split the roles. They believe a more responsive laboratory will increase revenue and they understand well-balanced inventory policies ought to minimize costs. We summarize the nine contributions. The SlideShare family just got bigger. from the word go. Background board This decision was taken based on a demand of 91 jobs and a utilization of station 1 of 0.83 between days 143 and, This paper will provide an analysis of 2 production scenarios. The winning team is the team with the most cash at the end of the game (cash on hand less debt). This proposal, when implemented, can save up to Rs. 1. Littlefield Simulation 2: Occupylittlefield With our second littlefield simulation complete, we have reinforced many of the concepts and lessons learned in class. It has been successfully used at the graduate and undergraduate level by thousands of students at more than a dozen universities. One key element that caught my attention was bottleneck issues. View Assessment - Littlefield_1_(1).pptx from MS&E 268 at Stanford University. Anita Lal It was quickly determined that the machine 1 was our bottleneck, as it was the only machine with 100% utilization and excess number of jobs in the queue. Management would like to increase revenue and decrease costs. Please make sure to read our rules and wiki before posting. Forecasting: In order to process this increase in units, we bought 2 machines for station 1, 3 machines for station 2, and 2 machine for station 3. Decisions Made LinkedIn and 3rd parties use essential and non-essential cookies to provide, secure, analyze and improve our Services, and (except on the iOS app) to show you relevant ads (including professional and job ads) on and off LinkedIn. Finally, on day 150 we try an all in strategy spending $160.000 in 1 machine for station 1 and 2 to increase the capacity and to process jobs only on conditions of contract 3. Our cash position got weaker and we then slipped to position 7 from position 2. As our utilization was remaining at a constant 100%, our lead times were also increasing. The logic behind this decision was to complete as many units as possible without delay. I started to decide the order quantity and reorder points based on my own gut feel but considering the previous simulation settings and live simulation behavior. Therefore, we took aproactive approach to buying machines and purchased a machine whenever utilization rates rose dangerously high or caused long queues. Overall I felt the Littlefield simulation to be an interesting cost leadership exercise with strong focus on the operations management. report, Littlefield Technologies Simulation: Batch Sizes Analysis. Initially we set the lot size to 320, attempting to take advantage of what we had learned from the goal about reducing the lead-time and WIP. Littlefield Technologies is an effective teaching tool that the students seem to really enjoy and the students are forced to think logically about the problems that they are facing and they learn from iterative experimentation. Littlefield simulation game is an important learning tool for understanding operations principles in production environments, and therefore it is widely used by many leading business schools. Do a proactive capacity management : Machines. As demand began to rise we saw that capacity utilization was now highest at station 1. This left the factory with zero cash on hand. . 2, This suggested that FIFO was a better strategy for Station 2, so the team switched the priority back at day 75., Before the simulation started, our team created a trend forecast, using the first 50 days of data, showing us that the bottleneck station was at Station 1. After letting our system adjust to the changes, we moved to contract 2 when the lead time was decreased to about 1 day. Littlefield Laboratories has opened a new blood testing lab. Do a proactive Inventory management during the simulation run. The goal of the symposium is to investigate how research in system dynamics is contributing to simulation-gaming, and how the more general field of simulation-gaming is influencing work in system dynamics. Our team operated and managed the Littlefield Technologies facility over the span of 1268 simulated days. Littlefield Simulation 2 | techwizard | 1,312,368 | Littlefield Simulation Strategy Hello Everyone! We found our calculations to be performing reasonable well during the initial phases of the simulation. Pennsylvania State University 241 Registered address: Louki Akrita, 23 Bellapais Court, Flat/Office 46 1100, Nicosia, Cyprus Here are our learnings. Our team operated and managed the Littlefield Technologies facility over the span of 1268 simulated days. Analysis of the First 50 Days When the exercise started, we decided that when the lead time hit 1 day, we would buy one station 1 machine based on our analysis that station 1 takes the longest time which is 0.221 hrs simulation time per batch. This button displays the currently selected search type. In November we hire 7 employees due to the increase of Holiday sales, and in December we hire 6 employees. Littlefield Simulation. BLUEs: In Littlefield, total operational costs are comprised of raw material costs, ordering costs and holding costs. When expanded it provides a list of search options that will switch the search inputs to match the current selection. View the full answer. 129 Start decision making early. After viewing the queues and the capacity utilization at each station and finding all, measures to be relatively low, we decided that we could easily move to contract 3, Except for one night early on in the simulation where we reduced it to contract 2, because we wouldnt be able to monitor the factory for demand spikes, we operated, on contract 3 almost the entire time. We had intense debate in the team, whether to add new machines further or not. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. of Days in Period (365), Cecilia McDaniel also gives a choice of two option plans to cover the shortfall, and propose the best decision following the analyzing impact on the cash flow statements of the hospital., First, with the price of Pig Iron plummeting, companies in our industry are in a fix to decide on cutting down additional costs that can maintain or improve the overall profits. Eventually, demand should begin to decline at a roughly linear rate. Littlefield simulation game is an important learning tool for understanding operations principles in production environments, and therefore it is widely used by many leading business schools. The company has been functioning well in terms of generating profit and demand so far. Day | Parameter | Value | The focus of the investigation, the findings of which are presented in this essay, was on the implications for the governance of global politics of the growing role of private military companies (PMCs). By whitelisting SlideShare on your ad-blocker, you are supporting our community of content creators. In order to expand capacity and prepare for the forecasted demand increase, the team decided to immediately add a second machine at Station 1. (True/False). Exhibit 1 : OVERALL TEAM STANDING 161 Contract Pricing Nevertheless, although we ranked 4th (Exhibit 1: OVERALL TEAM STANDING), we believe we gained a deeper understanding of queuing theory and have obtained invaluable experience from this exercise. 57 72 hours. We did many things right to win this simulation. Littlefield Technologies mainly sells to retailers and small manufacturers using the DSSs in more complex products. In the game, teams are challenged to optimize the system and maximize cash flow for Littlefield Technologies, a factory that assembles Digital Satellite System Receivers from electronic kits. By continuing well Littlefiled simulation game 1. The decision for the customer contract is between three options. With full utilization, we were unable to produce enough product to meet our order demands, further increasing the queues at each station and increasing our lead times (as shown)., When the simulation began, we quickly determined that there were three primary inputs to focus on: the forecast demand curve (job arrivals,) machine utilization, and queue size prior to each station. Upon the preliminary meeting with Littlefield management, Team A were presented with all pertinent data from the first 50 days of operations within the facility in order for the firm to analyze and develop an operational strategy to increase Littlefields throughput and ultimately profits. As explained on in chapter 124, we used the following formula: y = a + b*x. 0 6 comments Best Add a Comment camcamtheram 2 yr. ago Return On Investment: 549% Enjoy access to millions of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, and more from Scribd. Between days 60 to 70, utilization again hit 100% at Station 1 for a few days but the team decided to delay purchasing a third machine, as lead times remained below one day. The remaining days included few high demand and then declining demand days. Shortly after day 50, we switched to the contract-2. Any remaining machinery or inventory will be useless after Day 268, and thus have no residual value. In addition, the data clearly showedprovided noted that the demand was going to follow an increasing trend for the initial 150 days at least. In the Littlefield Simulation it would have been better on Day 51 to switch to the order quantity as recommended by the EOQ framework in order to minimize costs. The only expense we thought of was interest expense, which was only 10% per year. Kamal Gelya Littlefield Simulation Solutions and analytical decisons made. Station 2 never required another machine throughout the, simulation. Operations Policies at Littlefield Thanks. At the end of this products lifetime, demand Lead Time Management at Littlefield Labs Unfortunately not, but my only advice is that if you don't know what you're doing, do as little as possible so at least you will stay relatively in the middle The disadvantage with this approach is that it consumes a lot of time - the time, which runs at a rapid pace of three simulation days per minute. (Exhibit 2: Average time per batch of each station). Based on initial management analyses, customer demand for this new product is expected to be random, but the average demand will be level over the products 268-day lifetime. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. We did less messing around with the lot size and priority since these were definitely less important to the overall success of your factory than the number of machines you had. This enables you to see the amount produced each minute from each machine center. Given the average demand and an order lead time of 4 days we were able to calculate an approximate reorder point. ev Machine configuration: REVENUE Why? cite it correctly. performance of the factory for the first few days. COLLEGE |CARROLL SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT 1. BIC uses a strategy similar to the Niche Cost Leader Strategy. On observing the 100% machine utilization at any given station for few consecutive days, we immediately added the new machines. There were three questions posed in our case study: What are the highest three unit profits? Littlefield Labs makes it easy for students to see operations management in practice by engaging them in a fun and competitive online simulation of a blood testing lab. Second, we controlled the inventory level with finding right QOPT (Optimal Order Quantity) and reorder point according to continuous review system method. LT managers have decided that, after 268 days of operation, the plant will cease producing the DSS receiver, retool the factory, and sell any remaining inventories. With the daily average demand and SD we could control the Littlefield Labs system capacity. [pic] |BOSTON This laboratory uses the same process as the lab encountered in your prior assignment, Capacity Management at Littlefield Labsneither the process sequence nor the process time distributions have changed. The five options for cost cutting are reducing agency staff, downsizing staff, reducing benefits, changing the skill mix, and reducing length of stay for the patients. As a result, we continued to struggle with overproduction and avoiding stock outs, but made improvements resulting in less drastic inventory swings in the later. It appears that you have an ad-blocker running. I then multiplied that by the obvious 60 minutes per hour to determine the output from each machine center each hour. We nearly bought a machine there, but this would have been a mistake. Moreover, we also saw that the demand spiked up. LittleField Gam1 One-Other-Explanation 20,986 views Oct 8, 2020 116 Dislike Share Save Ardavan Asef-Vaziri 407 subscribers In this talk, I elaborate on the basic decisions in Game-I LittleField. Traditional military (or defense) contractors manufacture the weapons of war, provide the supplies that are required by armed forces, or perform other services that do not directly involve their personnel in combatant roles. To account for the unpredictability in demand and the possibility of getting many consecutive high demand days, we stayed with a reorder point greater than our estimate. Summary of articles. 113 As we will see later, this was a slight mistake since the interest rate did have a profound impact on our earnings compared to other groups. Another approach, which we could have followed for the decision-making could have been always decide the EOQ and ROP based on our demand-estimations and our own calculations. Uploaded by zilikos. Customer demand continues to be random, but the long-run average demand will not change over the product 486-day lifetime. 6. Retrieved from https://graduateway.com/littlefield-technologies-simulation-batch-sizes/, The Family Tradition of Making a Huge Batch of Ravioli as a Cultural Identity, Differentiating Between Market Structures Simulation. We set up a spreadsheet to forecast demand ev Although orders arrive randomly to LT, management expects that, on average, demand will follow the trends outlined above. Management requires a 10% rate of return on its investments. 8. Rank | Team | Cash Balance ($) | Customer orders processed within 1 day make $1000 Customer orders that take over 3 days make no money Between 1 and 3 days revenue is a decreasing linear function. 3 | makebigmoney | 1,141,686 | We tried not to spend our money right away with purchasing new machines since we are earning interest on it and we were not sure what the utilization would be with all three of the machines. Specifically, on day 0, the factory began operations with three stuffers, two testers, and one tuner, and a raw materials inventory of 9600 kits. Preplan should include your strategy for the game and the analysis your group did to arrive at that strategy. Based on our broad, We adjusted focus to our niche market, sold off capacity in the low end and traditional markets, and proceeded to decrease our production going into the next round. to help you write a unique paper. In the first trial simulation, we were hesitant to add machines. To ensure we are focused and accomplish these set goals, the following guidelines Running head: Capacity Management This study aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on behavioral operational research (BOR), specifically discussing the potential of system dynamics (SD) models to analyze decision-making, 5th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'19), Game-based learning refers to the use of game thinking and mechanics to engage and motivate students in the learning process. Our game simulation has taught me how to manage the human resources (HR), capacity planning, receiving, production, and shipping departments. November 4th, 2014 We also reorder point (kits) and reorder quantity (kits), giving us a value of 49 and 150., 66 | Buy Machine 3 | Both Machine 1 and 3 reached the bottleneck rate as the utilizations at day 62 to day 66 were around 1. Thereafter we kept an active watch on lead-times and tried to resolve it through the intense team communication and proactive operations-management. PMC personnel providing security services must be prepared to engage in combatant roles; however, much of their duties will be as guards to prevent breeches of security. We wanted machine 3 to never be idle and thus, kept the priority at 2. 5000 1 Our decisions were somewhat limited to our EOQ models completion and our risk adversity. The lab began operations with a raw materials inventory of 160 kits and $1,000,000 cash. Aneel Gautam Our team finished the simulation in 3rd place, posting $2,234,639 in cash at the end of the game. To give students a peak into some of these financial decisions, online simulations are used. Copyright 2023 service.graduateway.com. We did switch the lot size to 3 by 20 early in the simulation since we know that smaller batch sizes can speed up production. Pre-production market research suggested that the average daily demand level would be somewhere between 10 orders/day and 14 orders/day. on 54th day. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. You can read the details below. Littlefield Simulation Analysis Littlefield Initial Strategy When the simulation first started we made a couple of adjustments and monitored the performance of the factory for the first few days. We knew that we needed to increase capacity and the decision was made to purchase another machine 1., BIC is a product that has been extremely successful, offering items such as a low-cost disposable razor, and pens that add value to the user at an affordable price. Private military companies, in contrast to traditional military contractors provide both direct military services and security services. and 137 In June we neither hire nor fire because our units of demand are covered. Upon initial analysis of the first fifty days of operations, the team noticed that Station 1 had reached 100% utilization several times between days 40 and 50. At this point our orders we getting out on time with few exceptions. Poor inventory assessment before the simulation end can hurt. 25 PMC personnel may be directly involved in combatant roles when the contract provides for the delivery of security services. When first approaching this game we met to strategize, forecast, make a meeting schedule, and divide the work. The results support the value of simulations for building operational understanding of accumulations and suggest design considerations that may further increase the effectiveness of such SBLEs. 121 writing your own paper, but remember to However, observed 100% Utilization at Station #1 with the 17x more queued kits. Markowicz felt that he had a primary responsibility to the company to ensure that the production process runs smoothly at his plant, and after the first half of 2010, it reported profitable operations and net cash inflows from investing activities was positive for the first time in three years and had already reached $250,000 in just the first half of the year. We knew that the initial status quo was limited by the inventory quantity. On obeserving very low lead-times, we switched to contract-3. This meant that machine 1 was not able to keep up with the incoming demand and lacked the proper capacity. Activate your 30 day free trialto unlock unlimited reading. Once the priority was changed from FIFO to Step 4, the team noticed that both the utilization at Station 2 and the queues began to exhibit high variance from day to day. Day 53 Our first decision was to buy a 2nd machine at Station 1. Do not sell or share my personal information, 1. This suggested that perhaps the priority of scheduling needed adjustment; so on day 66 the team changed Station 2 priority from FIFO to give preference for Step 4 units. Our initial contract situation was contract-1, which provided a revenue of 175 $/day. after how many hours do revenues hit $0 in simulation 1. Delays resulting from insufficient capacity undermine LTs promised lead times and ultimately force LT to turn away orders. 1 However, if we fail to manage our operations to fulfill the promised lead-times, we do not receive any revenue at all. This is the breakdown of one such simulation., Unrestricted cash and Cash Equivalents /Cash Operation Expenses No. Although reputation and meeting goals is important, I must pay attention to the machines that are causing bottleneck issues; performing a cost/benefit analysis can fulfill this. I was mainly responsible for the inventory management. Littlefield Technologies was developed by Sunil Kumar and . Furthermore, implementation of these changes would not affect in any of the daily operations schedules. I was mainly responsible for the inventory . This meant an increased level of production and increased pressure on machines; therefore naturally the breakdown of machines was increasing. 89 Management is currently quoting 7-day lead times, but management would like to charge the higher prices that customers would pay for dramatically shorter lead times. Borrowing from the Bank Operations Policies at investment in the machine. 9 While ordering and setting the next reorder points, I kept in mind that the demand is increasing and I should have sufficient safety stock (buffer), so as not to lose revenues due to inventory shortages. 249 The company had excess space in the existing facility that could be used for the new machinery. We made many mistakes, but most importantly we have learned from. Littlefield Technologies and Littlefield Laboratories Littlefield is an online competitive simulation of a queueing network with an inventory point. At this point, all capacity and remaining inventory will be useless, and thus have no value. However, it was because we did not create a safety margin for production which came from our over estimating our carrying costs. 5 | donothing | 588,054 | Closer to Day 50, shop floor space constraints are limiting the number of jobs being accepted into the factory. The profit parameter was considered as an average. The difference between remaining at $750/order vs. $1250/order could have been as high as 1.3 million dollars over the life of the game (218 days) therefore the cost of new machines was small compared to the benefit and the overall revenue potential made it imperative to get to the lowest lead times possible. Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature, based at the Allen Institute for AI. The decision depends on the expected lead-time, which we promise to the customer. Starting at 5 PM on Wednesday, February 27, the simulation will begin The game will end at 9 PM on Sunday, March 3. requirements? PMC personnel are directly involved in combatant roles when the contract provides for the delivery of military capacities. A linear regression of the day 50 data resulted in the data shown on Table 1 (attached)below. Purchasing Supplies In the last simulation we relied much more heavily on our EOQ model and planned out purchases of machinery with the raise in demand. In appreciation of your prior recommendations and contributions, Littlefield has once again retained your services on their 50th day of operations. It has been the central topic for many resolutions, special committees, and peacekeeping efforts over the last sixty years. (2016, Dec 02). Background Initially we set the lot size to 3x20, attempting to take advantage of what we had learned from the goal about reducing the lead-time and WIP. Littlefield Simulation - Free download as Word Doc (.doc / .docx), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. We noticed that around day 31, revenues dipped slightly, despite the fact that the simulation was still nowhere near peak demand, suggesting that something was amiss in our process. In terms of choosing a priority for machine 2, we decided to switch to priority to step 2 since machine 2's utilization was consistently higher than machine 3's. 3. The sales revenue decreased from 9 million to 6 million in 12 years and also they incurred operating losses. During the simulation start, we calculated our own economic order quantity (EOQ) and reorder points (ROP). Littlefield Technologies charges a premium and competes by promising to ship a receiver within 24 hours of receiving the order, or the customer will receive a rebate based on the delay. Accessing your factory The United Nations has served as a platform for discussion about this conflict and has been used as a mediator between the opposing groups as a peaceful resolution to the issues is sought. 2. Having excess inventory, we concluded that 20,000 units should be enough considering our quality has not changed and our advertising will not increase the sales dramatically. A summary of the rationale behind the key decisions made would perhaps best explain the results we achieved. considering the suppliers delivery lead-times of 14-days and a safety stock. Anyone here experienced the wrath of Littlefield Simulation in their operations management course? We realized that without awareness, no matter how many units we make, sales would be inefficient. Clear role definitions avoid confusion and save time. Initially, we tried not to spend much money right away with adding new machines because we were earning interest on cash stock. The simulation ends on day-309. ROI=Final Cash-Day 50 Cash-PP&E ExpenditurePP&E Expenditure 1,915,226-97,649-280,000280,000=549% Need a custom essay sample written specially to meet your Once the initial first 50 days of data became available, we plotted the data against different forecasting methods: Moving average, weighted moving average, exponential smoothing, exponential smoothing with trend, and exponential smoothing with trend and season. Whenever revenues reduced, we use to change the scheduling and observe if the revenue problem is resolved. As such, the first decision to be made involved inventory management and raw material ordering. Summary of articles. Your write-up should address the following points: A brief description of what actions you chose and when.
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