Simulation Incidents

This week our team advanced through the first 2 decision sets in the simulation.   We worked through the decisions as a team using GoTo meeting.  This was my first experience with this online collaboration tool.  I found it very easy and useful.  I was able to navigate the simulation and the team was able to look at the same screen eliminating confusion as to what data was being discussed.  

We had two special incidents occur during the first periods.  We did not know at the time that the social media choice would not affect the outcome of the simulation.  We discussed our personal use of social media and how it influences are purchases.  From our collective experiences we choose to use Facebook and Twitter with Adwords.  We felt that the brand would get more exposure from this option than from having a web page and blog. 

I was disappointed to find out that it only gives a block of meaningless comments on the dashboard page.

The second event was the expiration ethics question.  We talked about the different options and quickly decided that shipping it to our normal customers was not an option.  We did not want to damage any relationships.  We did talk about the two remaining options.  We agreed that selling our product outside the normal distribution channels was the best option because it would minimize the loss on the product.   This is a scenario is one that I have to deal with in real life.   We have shelf life flags on our products that warn us if the material in inventory is approaching expiration.   We have several different methods of dealing with the issue.  We retest material and extend shelf life when possible.  We sell material with short remaining shelf life at discount.  We rework trough the manufacturing process to reset the self life.  Finally, as a last resort, we scrap the material and pay the disposal cost.   The biggest driver in this conversation is does the choice meet the customer’s needs.  For example, extending self life through testing might get the material to the customer faster than reworking or making from scratch.