Shortcut to Success

Everyone Can Succeed

Almost everyone who works as part of a team, and has a few minutes explanation beforehand, is able to make quality decisions which lead the Fine Manufacturing Company [FMC] to higher sales and profits. So, after you learn how FMC works, you'll be able to coach players to a successful outcome quickly.

Our experience with participants, ranging from students in undergraduate school to seasoned executives, is that it takes on average four tries over a total of 60 virtual months to be successful. Elapsed real time is about one hour. After a few false starts, a good team is able to double the stock price [$6/share to $12/share] at the end of 24 virtual months of operations.

The facilitator needs to spend a few minutes, before the team(s) begin play, explaining how the Virtual Factory works. [ JKA has a PowerPoint slide presentation with text if you feel you'd like some help here.]

But Not By Themselves

Working alone and without guidance, almost no one is able to succeed in what is considered a reasonable time [under two hours]. So don't feel disappointed or discouraged if you want to "cheat" a bit by reading this section and saving time.

Career Hint
Even if you are able to breeze through and succeed on the first try, DO NOT tell your boss to "just download a copy". Working alone, your boss is likely to be frustrated and unhappy. Not a good situation for your boss or you. Rather, prepare a presentation and demonstrate how the Virtual Factory works, after you thoroughly understand it yourself.

Run CIM/Quality Successfully

Steps to Take:

F Before clicking the START button, install the following ISO 9000 subsystems:

Incoming Inspection,
Final Inspection,
Nonconformance Control,
Corrective Action
Purchasing [Supplier Ratings].

Explanation

The Inspection subsystems will prevent most defective products from reaching the customer. Sales increase because your field quality exceeds that of your competitors.

The Nonconformance Control subsystem will spot defects that repeat (underlying, systemic problems) and automatically initiate Corrective Actions for these nonconformances.

The Corrective Action subsystem lets you invest in the correction of the underlying problem. [Don't be surprised if problems you invest in occasional come back. This also happens in real life, so try, try again.] Only invest in corrective actions below $5,000. For FMC, its the number of systemic problems you eliminate that count in the first year.

Installing only five subsystems to start leaves you enough money to invest in Corrective Actions to eliminate the root causes. If root causes aren't eliminated early on, the plant will be overrun with defects. This creates scrap, repair and rework losses which can bankrupt FMC.

After the first critical year, you will have a new budget to invest. At that time you can install other quality subsystems [It turns out process control, auditing, training and calibration are not critical for FMC in the first year. You would eventually discover this and other aspects about FMC that we mention here by trail and error after a few restarts]. You will also have money to invest on high-ticket corrective actions and really clean up product quality.

One of FMC's suppliers has very poor quality. This will show up in the Supplier Ratings report. Each month suppliers with ratings below the minimum are sent a letter. After the third letter the supplier is automatically dropped, in accordance with contractual agreements. you can terminate a supplier before hand, but you do risk a law suit. It may be worth the risk.

A Fast Game

FMC has many systemic problems to start, a mobile customer base and less than enough money to do all you'd want when you'd like. This makes the Company, in many ways, an ideal workshop case study. if you don't make good moves quickly, you're toast. Players find out early on about mistakes, learn from them and then try again.

Airline pilots cope with 5-10 emergencies in eight hours of 747 simulation. This allows airlines to compress several lifetimes of critical decision making into a few days of training. Piloting FMC through 60 virtual months of operations to make it successful in under an hour of real time uses peoples' time efficiently. But it leaves little room to get it right first time on your own.

You can slow the game down by selecting from the main menu Parameters|Market and setting the Competition Level to "Uncompetitive". You can also lower the prevailing labor rate under Parameters|Quality. Bear in mind competing teams should have identical parametric settings.

F At some point, you should try running without installing any quality subsystem and see what happens.