Paper Airplane Game Research Paper

This paper describes my experience of playing the airplane game during Monday’s class. Throughout the paper several key concepts are discussed: Sky View’s initial strategy; the process we elected; where we fell short, and what we learned and may have done differently to achieve a more successful outcome. |

In playing the airplane game, my team’s initial strategy was to differentiate our product by providing a high quality airplane with an aeronautical design built to outlast our competitor’s products. We constructed our mission statement and overall objective around what we perceived to be our customer’s enjoyment. Using a complex design, our airplane would be able to achieve further distances as well as simulate the flight of a real aircraft. Structuring our strategy in this manner led us to believe our company would be an order-winner in both quality and flexibility while remaining an order-qualifier in both time (response) and cost.
When we were in the very beginning of our product life cycle, at product design, our team did not consider the implications of designing a complex airplane with a small staff and little time. While we did use concurrent engineering by having each team member participate in both the design and engineering activities, we did not concern ourselves as much as we could have with the manufacturability and value engineering aspect. For example, by reducing the complexity of our product, our end result may have been much more successful causing us to achieve a larger profit. We utilized a repetitive process that allowed us to recreate the same airplane and parts over and over again without having to customize any significant features. The only piece of customization we did offer was marketing the name of our buyer on the side of the airplane, which was a small customization feature that did not adversely affect the speed or capacity of our process. Our team could have also conducted a better value analysis. While producing our product,