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On October 23 at 9 am, you will begin managing Littlefield Technologies (LT) factory that produces its newly developed Digital Satellite System (DSS) receivers. LT mainly sells to retailers and small manufacturers who use the DSS receivers in more complex products. LT charges a premium and competes by promising to ship a receiver within a certain time after receiving the order, or the customer will receive a rebate based on the delay.

The LT factory has invested all its cash into capacity and inventory. Specifically, at day 0, the factory began operations with three stuffers, two testers, and one tuner, and a raw materials inventory of 9600 kits. This left the factory with zero cash on hand. Customer demand will be random, but the long-run average daily demand will not change over the products 486-day lifetime. At the end of this lifetime, demand will end abruptly, and factory operations will be terminated. At this point, all capacity and remaining inventory will be useless, and thus have no value.

When you resume control of operations, you will find that the factory has been running for 50 simulated days, and you will be responsible for managing the capacity, scheduling, purchasing, lot sizing, and contract quotations to maximize the cash generated by the factory over its lifetime. Your operating budget is restricted to the cash generated by the factory itself. You will have control of the factory from day 50 to day 386. At half hour per simulated day, this translates to seven real days. At day 386 (i.e., October 30 at 9 am), you will lose control of the factory, and the simulation will quickly run another 100 days of simulated time. When you lose control of the factory, you are expected to leave the factory parameters set to maximize the factorys cash position when the factory shuts down on day 486. After the simulation ends on day 486, you can check the status of your factory, but the factory will no longer be running.

Your team should turn in one summary of what actions you took during the week you had access to the factory, why you took those actions, and in retrospect whether you think you did the right thing. Your report should include your team name, the name of each team member, your final cash balance, and a printout of your History as an attachment. Show analysis to justify your conclusions. If you have used any of the formulas from class in making your decisions, please include the calculations in your report.

Calculate:

1. Average demand rate

2. Average lead time

3. Average queue time

4. Utilizations at different stations

5. Average throughput time in the factory

6. Where are bottlenecks (capacity)

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