Ac 2007-2822: Lampshade Game for Teaching Lean Manufacturing

Implementing lean manufacturing concepts is essential for companies in the manufacturing and service industries to survive in the very competitive global marketplace. A key point is to eliminate waste while delivering value to the customers. Thus, graduates from engineering programs such as manufacturing, industrial and systems engineering and engineering management must be able to focus and apply lean principles as they transition to the industry. The purpose of this paper is to present a new game named the “Lampshade Game” that can be beneficial for teaching lean manufacturing concepts to both undergraduate and graduate students. The Lampshade Game demonstrates the advantages and disadvantages of some of the key lean manufacturing principles (such as customer focus, quality focus, JIT, flexible manufacturing, setup and rework reduction) in comparison to craft and mass manufacturing by manually simulating the production of lampshades for each of the process types. The students form teams, and ideally each team should have a chance to manufacture lampshades using all three forms of manufacturing. The manufacturing performance is gauged and compared by different key performance indicators including inventory levels, total manufacturing cycle time, customer fill rate, and production yield. This paper will describe the game, its objectives and share experiences from a classroom implementation.