Page 6 - Ideas
P. 6

capacity  required  in  the  future  periods.  Based  on  their       produce better results in practice. Students gain a better
                   predictions,  the  groups  make  decisions  about  capacity           understanding  about  the  key  tradeoffs  involved  in
                   expansion  and  production.  Students  play  the  game  for           decision-making  of  real  companies.  For  example,  how
                   multiple rounds and compare their profits at the end of               building  too  many  capacities  or  producing  too  many
                   selected  rounds.   Just  like  real-life,  improved  decisions       products  would  result  in  outcomes  such  as  a  large
                   can  help  lagging  students  catch  up,  while  less  good           fraction of capacities being idle while continuing to incur
                   decisions  can  cause  leading  students  to  lose  their             significant  operating  costs,  or  be  saddled  with  a  lot  of
                   advantage.  As  the  decisions  made  by  students                    inventories,  resulting  in  lower  profits.  By  choosing  the
                   throughout  the  game  play  a  part  in  shaping  the  final         right amount of capacities and products, students would
                   outcome and determining the eventual winner, students                 be  able  to  obtain  higher  profits,  thus  enabling  them  to
                   are  compelled  to  stay  focused  and  on  their  toes  from         construct an optimisation model to maximise their profits.

                   start to end.
                                                                                         Challenges abound
                   After  the  game,  Fang  Xin  conducts  debriefs  with  his

                   students  about  the  outcomes,  and  thinking  process               CTE  worked  with  Fang  Xin  to  bring  his  vision  of  the
                   underlying the different capacity expansion strategies. As            Capacity  Game  to  life,  providing  support  for  the
                   part  of  the  learning  process,  students  also  discuss  the       necessary  programming  and  testing  of  the  tool.
                   challenges they faced and explore why certain strategies              Together,  they  navigated  the  complications  that  arose.
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