INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT

AHMEDABAD

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT II
PGP/PGP-FABM/FPM I, Term II, 2017-18

Littlefield Simulation
The Littlefield Simulation game is designed to give students an experience of running a
factory shopfloor by utilizing the various OM concepts that they have learnt: capacity
planning, queueing, inventory planning, etc. Please follow these steps:
a) Review the attached document Littlefield Technologies: Overview
b) You will play the game as a team: each group as identified by the PGP office will
play as a team.
c) Identify a name for your team (remember in Game 2 when you compete with other
teams, they will be able to observe your teams performance. So identify a name
whereby the identification of your team may be easy/hard as you may desire).
d) Note the dates outlined below.
e) Go to http://op.responsive.net/lt/iim/start.html and register your team (use the access code
ahmedabad). Do this before 1800 hrs on 18 November.
f) In enter section number here, enter your section name: A or B or C or D or E
g) Enter full names of all team members in your group.
h) Send an email to the Academic Associate: Sections A&C: Madhuri Jha [Email:
madhurij@iima.ac.in]; B&D: Shilpa Nagre [Email: shilpan@iima.ac.in]; Section E: Vaseem
Shaikh [Email: vaseems@iima.ac.in]. Complete the process outlined above before 18
November, 1800 hours when the registration window closes. If you miss out, your
group name cannot be added later on. So, it makes a lot of sense to finish the
registration process ASAP and send emails to the respective AAs.
i) Once the simulator has started, students can access their teams from
http://op.responsive.net/lt/iim/entry.html. Await subsequent instructions for accessing
Game 1.

Important Dates for Littlefield Simulation

Date Time Details

17 November 1800 hrs Open Registration Window
18 November 1800 hrs Close Registration Window
19 November 1800 hrs Open Game 1
20 November 1800 hrs Start Game 1
28 November 1800 hrs Open Game 2 (will be evaluated)
30 November 1800 hrs Start Game 2 (will be evaluated)
9 December 0845 hrs Final Group Report submission/in-class
Presentation
Game 1
This game will give you a feel of the simulation, and an opportunity to change/edit some of the
parameters for which you are given control. The number of parameters that can be changed will
increase in Game 2. Though the results of Game 1 will not count towards your grade, please
track all your actions and the rationale for the same.

Background

Littlefield Technologies (LT) opened its first and only factory to produce its newly developed
Digital Satellite System (DSS) receivers. LT mainly sells to retailers and small
manufacturers using the DSSs in more complex products. LT charges a premium and
competes by promising to ship a receiver within 72 hours of receiving the order, or the
customer will receive a rebate based on the delay.

The product lifetime of many high-tech electronic products is short, and the DSS receiver is
no exception. After 268 days of operation, the plant will cease producing the DSS receiver,
and retool the factory. Any leftover inventory would be rendered useless with no salvage
value. In the initial months, demand is expected to grow at a roughly linear rate for about 6
months. It is expected that LT will announce their next generation product then, and this will
lead to the demand beginning to decline, at a roughly linear rate. Although orders arrive
randomly to LT, management expects that, on average, demand will follow the trends
outlined above.

Managements main concern is managing the capacity of the factory in response to the
complex demand pattern predicted. Delays resulting from insufficient capacity would
undermine LTs promised lead times and ultimately force LT to turn away orders.

Assignment

It has now been approx. 50 days since this DSS went to sale, and LT has started to notice that
a few of their receivers have been delivered after their due dates. In response, management
has installed a high-powered operations team (your team) to manage the factorys capacity.
For the next 168 simulated days (one-week = 168 hours in real time), you must buy or sell
machines to maximize the factorys overall cash position at the end of the 268 day period.
Currently, the factory has one board stuffing machine, one tester machine, and one tuning
machine. Your shop-floor supervisor has recently completed the following processing time
estimates:

Step Station
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 2
Set-up time (per lot) Operation time (per unit)
0.4 hours 0.0625 hours
0 0.02
1.5* 0.002*
0 0.02

* tuning time is exponential.

In addition, very little variability was observed around the processing times indicated above
for process steps 1, 2 and 4, so that they can be considered deterministic for practical
purposes. Process step 3, which is performed on station 3 (tuning), is more labor-intensive, so
that the corresponding processing times exhibit more variability and their distribution seems
roughly exponential (coefficient of variation equal to 1).

You can change the number of machines at any station by clicking on the station and then
clicking on Edit Data in the menu that pops up. You may also change the way testing is
being scheduled. Currently, jobs at the tester [station 2] are scheduled First-In-First-Out
(FIFO), but you can also give priority status to the initial tests or the final tests (in addition to
FIFO). This may be relevant in Game 2.

When the simulation period begins, there will already be 50 days of history available for your
review. The simulator will run at a rate of one simulated day per one real hour for the next
7 days after the simulation period begins. After the assignment window ends, an additional
50 days of simulation will be executed at once. Thus, there will be a total of 268 days of
simulation corresponding to a product life time of about 9 months. You will have control of
the factory for 168 of the 268 simulated days (day 51 to day 218). After the simulation is
over, you can check the status of your factory, but the factory will no longer be running.

You will have full control of your factories beginning at 1800 hours on November 20, 2017.
Before that, you will have access to the Littlefield factory to observe, download and analyze
data from the first 50 days of operations, and become familiar with the simulation website.
After the simulation is over, you will be able to check the status of your factory, but the
factory will no longer be running.