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 step–by–step 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 student’s names
* Caps and spaces are OK
* Please NO apostrophes!
Hannah Lisker
Charlie Wong
Shane O’Brien

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
– supplier’s 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 team’s 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
2
2
2
3
1
4
0
5
3
6
0
7
0
8
3
9
3
10
1
11
3
12
3
13
2
14
2
15
6
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
1
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!