Issues In Education
Everything I Know About General Management I Can Learn Playing with Legos
By Elliott N. Weiss
Experiential games have long been used to break up the tedium and boredom present in courses that consist entirely of lectures and cases. We use the hands-on game described in this paper to bring relevance to the concepts of high performance, re-engineering, lean production and total quality management. We felt it was important that students actually experience some of the implementation issues relevant to these concepts rather than merely reading or talking about them. We have used this game in both MBA and executive training programs for both the public and private sector throughout the world. It has been a successful experience for groups as diverse as manufacturing managers, bowling center employees, government officials and high school students.
While we initially developed the game to teach principles related to operations management, we found that the lessons learned regarding general management are much more powerful. By analyzing the competitive results of hundreds of teams over this 10-year period we have observed a set of principles that lead to success in the game. We believe that these principles are applicable to organizations in general.
Overview of the Activity
Competing teams of eight to 15 students are given manuals describing the production process for a building block structure (see Exhibit 1), which we have named the "Gazogle." The manual describes the production process and roles for the participants. Participant roles for each team include four assemblers, four material handlers, one procurer, one shipper, one comptroller, one or two customers, one or two suppliers, and one or two observers. Roles can be adjusted depending on the number of participants per team. Teams are given 15 minutes to organize and plan for the first production round.
Exhibit 1: The Gazogle®
The first round consists of four, one-minute periods (weeks). Each period begins with the customer/instructor requesting a specified number of the finished product. At the end of the period, delivered items are counted, and backorders and defects are recorded. At the end of the four periods that comprise the first round (month), scores are calculated and announced, and teams are given a 15- to 20-minute period to improve the production process. The second and third rounds are run the same way as the first. Improvement opportunities include reduction of the work force, changing the layout of the production process, redesigning the product, and working with the customer and supplier to simplify the finished product, the production process and the supply chain. We charge teams monthly as follows: $100 for each worker, $20 for each assembly station (table), $20 for a defective Gazogle, $10 for a lost sale and $5 for each Gazogle left in inventory at the end of a round. Teams receive $30 for each good Gazogle delivered. Prior to the third round we also provide instructions for customization of products and volume discounts.
Suggestions for Effective Use
The exercise can either be used as a capstone to summarize learnings to date or as a justification for principles to come. The exercise, as we use it, takes approximately one-and-a-half to two hours to run, with an additional debriefing time of one to one-and-a-half hours, often completed during the next class period.
Prior to the class, we set up the tables that represent the production process. We use four tables for each team as work centers for the assemblers. An additional table is used for both receiving (where raw materials are stored) and shipping (where finished goods are delivered to the customers). At the beginning of class, we give a 10-minute introduction describing the game and its purpose. We assign students to teams, hand out the manuals and begin the game. The observers, customers and suppliers are briefed separately while the teams are making initial plans for the first period.
Although some production improvements are apparent upon inspection, we allow no modifications to the existing process before the first round. We, as facilitators, assume final authority over any changes to the product and the process. After three rounds, the game ends. In the subsequent discussion we debrief the students by starting out with reports from the observers.
The lessons learned covered material requirements planning through bill-of-materials explosion, assembly-line balancing, the effectiveness of cellular manufacturing, break-even analysis, and quality management activities, such as the role and use of inspection and the location of quality control in a production environment. Product design issues such as design for manufacturability and plant layouts for delayed and/or mass customization are also introduced.
Over the years of playing this game, we have observed that teams that perform well implicitly understand and act according to the framework depicted in Exhibit 2. We label this framework "Value Chain Dynamics."
Exhibit 2: Value Chain Dynamics
Teams that do well do more than simply understand the production process; rather, they understood the linkages among internal leadership, the people on the team, and the systems and processes that are in place and that can be developed. Additionally, they work closely with their suppliers and their customers to add value throughout the supply chain. They take off their internal blinders and realize that their organization interacts externally with their suppliers and customers throughout the entire value chain. The figure in Exhibit 2 depicts the interdependence among leadership, people, systems, processes, suppliers and customers throughout the entire supply chain. The essence of this framework is that within the organization there must be congruence among the leadership, the people and the processes/systems to provide customer-specified value within the context of the entire value chain, from supplier to our organization to customer. Teams that implicitly understand these linkages are those that excel in the simulation.
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Elliott N. Weiss (weiss@virginia.edu) is the Isidore Horween Research Professor and the Associate Dean for MBA Education at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia.
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