Littlefield Simulation Written Assessment

Based on previous calculations for the utilization of each station, we knew before starting Littlefield Simulation that Station 3, with a utilization of 90.37%, was going to be a bottleneck in our production. The earlier we could purchase a new machine for Station 3 the better. Of course, similar to The Goal, the challenge would be once the new Station 3 machine was purchased the bottle neck would then become Station 1 with a utilization of 89.49%. Due to the reorder quantity cash restrictions, we set the reorder quantity to 0 while ensuring that we had sufficient cash for the next inventory purchase and machine purchase to put the machine purchases through early allowing the team to gain an initial lead. We immediately restored our reorder quantities to previous benchmark levels following the machine purchase.

In addition, once both machines were purchased, we were able to level off our lead time hovering around or below .5 days, and switch from contract type 2 to contract type 3. This allowed us to not only increase our revenue per order, but also bump up our position in overall standing. However, we soon realized that each time our inventory order was placed (typically 4800-7200 quantities), our cash balance would go down significantly and we would instantly drop down to the bottom of the list in overall standing. Through our contract 3 revenue we would quickly and consistently build our cash balance back up, but it became clear that if we wanted to remain competitive we were going to need to find a way to break this cycle.

We decided we would try to lower our reorder and order quantity points. By bringing down the inventory levels we were hoping we could still maintain our contract type 3 and even out our revenue. In doing this we were able to shorten our overall standing cycle to just loop in the top half of the teams while keeping a more significant amount of cash on hand than we had previously been able to hold onto. However, the challenge