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.
