Little Field 1 Report Paper
Team Bigfield
Michael Cambell
Donovan Ricks
Robert Sorum
Van Sy
I.
Team Dynamics
For the Little field 1 project our team, Bigfield, consisted of four people. First we have
Michael Cambell, his number is 707-450-9523 and his email is: theonebras@aol.com. Next is
Donovan Ricks, his number is 916-284-5028 and his email is: Donny.Rix_84@yahoo.com.
Next is Robert Sorum, his number is 530-219-4173 and his email is: rtsorum@gmail.com. And
then finally we have Van Sy, his number is 916-346-8856 and his email is vchaysy@yahoo.com.
Responsibility for monitoring the progress of our team was taken up by each member of
the team. Each member was assigned two days to monitor the progress. On each team
member’s day they would be responsible for monitoring all stations in the Little Field
simulation. It was up to that team member to locate our weaknesses within the simulation and to
bring it up to the entire group.
Once the group was notified of a change that needed to be made, we would all decide
together through a group text. After we all decided that the change was a good idea, we would
let the team member who was in charge for the day know and he made the appropriate changes
to the station. This proved to be our success in running the simulation; all team members knew
what was going on when changes needed to be made. We all came together to figure out the best
course of action and then we executed.
II.
Operational Decision and Analysis
1. Step 1 is the bottleneck because it has the largest average queue size compare to step 2, 3 or 4.
Even though we purchased 5 machines for Step 1, the utilization rate were around 80% or 90%
when demand was high. Although Step 2 and 4 do their jobs in the station, they only take 2.1
hours which is still low compare to 5.3 hours in Step 1.
2. In order to provide a throughput of 12 orders per day, 3 machines are needed because 3
machines/5.3 hours = .57 orders per hour.
3. The formula is y = 0.0839x + 1.0008. Therefore the expected daily demand on day 152 will be
13.75.
4.
5.
6. The only machines that our group sold were at station 2. We started out with 3 machines and
decided to sell 1 on day 211 and another on day 215, leaving us with 1 machine at station 2.
After consulting the utilization of station 2 we realized that the utilization was very low. Selling
1 machine slightly increased the utilization but we were not satisfied. After selling another
machine we finally reached maximum utilization on day 217. In retrospect I think our group did
do the right thing, although I think we could have sold these machines earlier to increase
utilization and maximize profits.
7. At the testing station we gave priority to step 2on day 58, in order to schedule the shortest job
first as discussed in the lecture on scheduling. On day 211 we changed the scheduling from
priority to step 2 to FIFO. Although we changed this in order to push more jobs through towards
the end of the simulation it seems as though our utilization at station 3 went down. In retrospect I
feel that we should have moved priority to step 3 because this would have been a more efficient
way to push jobs through considering station 2 reached its maximum utilization on day 219.