MyOperationsExperience features

Students are responsible for providing forecasts for a petrol retailer so that their supplies match customer demand as closely as possible. They are asked to manage forecasts for different types of petrol and their success is judged using the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). The simulation will help students to understand customer demand, generate forecasts and evaluate forecast models.

Students manage on-going orders for 'gizmos' by carefully selecting suppliers, and managing costs and schedules. Students will develop a better understanding of the factors involved in the supplier selection decision, and that the characteristics of an ideal supplier may not be consistent across different types of items. Success is judged by the quantity and costs of procurement against the original budget, and an additional ‘Customer's Morale’ measure.

Students are put in the position of a store manager in a large electronics retail chain and they make decisions around how much inventory to order and when to place their orders. They will learn how the economic order quantity (EOQ) is calculated and the limitations of using EOQ to guide their decisions.

Students manage a restaurant for the period of one-year, and have to respond to both internal messages and external customer feedback. The simulation will teach them that quality is an investment and that quality is a continuous pattern of activities and not a one-time event, enabling them to develop a more complete understanding of total cost concepts.

Students work through the planning phase and execution phase of a construction project where they can select subcontractors and additional expenditure items and learn how to manage a critical path. They are judged on the conventional project management criteria of quality, cost and timing.