Littlefield Game

Prof. Mellie Pullman

Online Registration & Game
Overview

Why are we doing this?

Instead of a textbook problems, you will
apply analysis techniques in a simulated
service process environment.
More real and more fun
A team effort

Getting on to the game, come

prepared with a credit card, your
team name and password (details on
their format in next slides)
http://lab.responsive.net/lt/pullman/start.html

Click here

Create A New Account

Click here

Follow stepbystep instructions

to purchase your access code

Enter course code: cash

Registering Your Team

Enter team password

* All lower case letters or numbers
* No punctuation or spaces

example

Enter students names

* Caps and spaces are OK
* Please NO apostrophes!

Hannah Lisker
Charlie Wong
Shane OBrien

Enter student access codes

Hannah Lisker
Charlie Wong
Shane OBrien

akjndk8l
slhfg7wk
hkjft96l

AFTER THAT:
Your team is officially registered
(register prior to break; at 7:30 PM
the first 50 days will run and
suspend.
Resumes on January 13 at 6 PM
Finishes on January 20 at 6 PM.

A Brief Overview

Your Game:
Four steps at three stations

1) Sample Preparing

Step 1 board
stuffing

2) Testing

Steps 2 & 4 products

are tested and
information is
recorded

3) Tuning

Step 3

Capacity Costs
Station #1
SAMPLE PREPARING MACHINES

$90,000 each
Station #2
TESTING MACHINES

$80,000 each
Station #3
TUNING MACHINES

$100,000 each
Resale value for any machine
$10,000 each

Factory Process
Every step has its own process time
Littlefield measures average daily
utilization rates at each station
Queues hold waiting jobs

lead time = process time + wait time

Orders and Kits

Every arriving customer order is matched
with a new test kit
test kits cost $600 each
shipments have a fixed ordering cost = $1,000
suppliers lead time is always 4 days

Three criteria to place an order:

1) Inventory on-hand is lower than the reorder
point
2) There are no shipments of materials in transit
3) Cash on hand is sufficient for the order
quantity

Reorder Point
Stocks are replenished when they reach some
pre-determined low point.
A system commonly used by squirrels
Well, also by you, your checkbook vendor, and many
other systems.

In this game, you can not change the reorder

point or inventory order quantity.

Logging Into Your Game after the

simulator has been initialized
during the break

http://lab.responsive.net/lt/pullman/entry.html

Logging Into Your Game

Enter team name

example

Logging Into Your Game

Enter teams password

example

Explore Your factory

Click Box: Customer Order Queue

Click Plot Job Arrivals and

Download Data
Click download button

Save to desktop
Open with MS Excel or
another spreadsheet
application
Copy > Paste data columns
to a master worksheet
Index by Day

Opening the data in Excel

You will have 50 days
worth of data until it
starts running
dynamically
The demand will
increase until around
day 150 and then level
off
Figure out the demand
point where it levels off

number of jobs arriving

each day

day
1

10

11

12

13

14

15

Forecasting Demand
(arrival rate of jobs)

Overall Linear trend

= SLOPE(known_y's,known_x's)
= INTERCEPT(known_y's,known_x's)
Forecast for the demand at the point where
you think it will level out.

Look at Capacity Problems

(station 1 Queue Box)
daily average number of kits queued for station 1
800
700
600
500
400

daily average number of kits

queued for station 1

300
200
100
0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49

Click on Station 1 to see Utilization

utilization of station 1, averaged over each day
1.2

Might want to see

what happened

0.8

0.6

utilization of station 1,
averaged over each day

0.4

0.2

0
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49

Completed Job data

Current Job Lead Time through

system & contract information

Key Hints
Forecasts estimate future outcomes
They are not known for precision
A prediction interval should be considered
Arrival Rate * Process Time
Expected Utilization =
# of Machines

Key Hints
Balance your work stations, reduce bottleneck
Proactive are better than reactive strategies

Deliverable
No more than 2 written pages which cover your
teams experience
What did you do (in sequence)?
Why did you make that decision?
How did it work out?
What did you learn during the process?
Include an Appendix with a journal and any
relevant calculations.

Good Luck!