IME 553 Final Analysis

Team DynamicsOur team dynamics remained unchanged throughout the duration of the simulation. The recurring practice was for everyone to check on LittleField in their own time. If anything seemed off then they would inform the group so that we could take proper action. While this did not prevent major events from happening it did shorten the time span that some occurred. If we were to do this exercise again we would not change any of the team dynamics. All group members were able to put their input into decisions and we were successful in the simulation.

Assessment of Initial AnalysisOur initial assessment was mostly accurate. It gave us a great point to base our starting actions off in the simulation. Our biggest problems were that we did not update our reorder point and order quantity. Due to these errors we had periods during the simulation were we ran out of inventory which impacted our revenue for a time.

Order Demand Forecasting:

Assessment of PlanOur final rank was second in the class. Our final cash position on day 268 was $1,665,599.00. When the simulation first started we dropped to the bottom of the board because we made some fairly large changes and purchases. On day 56 we purchased machine for station 2 and also one for station 3. Soon after on day 60 we purchased another machine for station 2 and also one for station 1, these purchases were influenced by the utilization of the stations which were all running at 100% and were not keeping up with demand. Also for this reason on day 63 we changed the scheduling rule for station 2 to priority to step 4 that way we could get finished product out. From that point we made slight changes as factor fluctuated but while we did that our position continually increased. On day 72 we changed our reorder point to 2220 kits, then on day 77 we changed our reorder quantity to 10020 kits, this was right after we had ran out of inventory for ten straight days taking a huge hit to revenue. On day 94 we felt comfortable changing our contract number to the second option, quoted lead time = 1 day(s) , maximum lead time = 3 day(s), maximum revenue = 1,000. In retrospect, had we solidified our reorder point and quantity sooner we could have also changed out contract sooner and in turn made more profit. Our last two changes happened on days 101 and 178 when we once again changed the reorder point to 4200 kits and reorder quantity to 12000 kits respectively. Once again the motivation for these changes was a period of lost revenue due to having no inventory on hand. For a large portion of the simulation we were the top of the leaderboard. Therefore, we were the most consistent group throughout the simulation. While we are content with our final position and progress through the exercise, we would have changed our reorder point and reorder quantity earlier in the simulation so that we could have prevented some of the times where we were not making money.