The Gamer Company is a video game production company that specializes in educational video games for kids. The company’s R&D department is always looking for great ideas for new games. On average, the R&D department generates about 25 new ideas a week. To go from idea to approved product, the idea must pass through the following stages: paper screening (a 1-page document describing the idea and giving a rough sketch of the design), prototype development, testing, and a focus group. At the end of each stage, successful ideas enter the next stage. All other ideas are dropped. The following chart depicts this process, and the probability of succeeding at each stage. The paper screening for each idea takes 2 hours of a staff member’s time. After that, there is a stage of designing and producing a prototype. A designer spends 4 hours designing the game in a computer-aided-design (CAD) package. The actual creation of the mock-up is outsourced to one of many suppliers with essentially limitless capacity. It takes 4 days to get the prototype programmed, and multiple prototypes can be created simultaneously. A staff member of the testing team needs 2 days to test an idea. Running the focus group takes 2 hours of a staff member’s time per idea, and only one game is tested in each focus group. Finally, the management team meets for 3 hours per idea to decide if the game should go into production. Available working hours for each staff member are 8 hours per day, 5 days a week. The current staffing plan is as follows: A. Paper screening: 3 staff members. B. Design and Production: 4 staff members. C. Testing: 6 staff members. D. Focus Group: 1 staff member. E. Final Decision: 1 management team With the current staffing plan, how many new ideas will be put into production per week?

Practical Management Science
6th Edition
ISBN:9781337406659
Author:WINSTON, Wayne L.
Publisher:WINSTON, Wayne L.
Chapter2: Introduction To Spreadsheet Modeling
Section: Chapter Questions
Problem 20P: Julie James is opening a lemonade stand. She believes the fixed cost per week of running the stand...
icon
Related questions
Question

The Gamer Company is a video game production company that specializes in educational video games for kids. The company’s R&D department is always looking for great ideas for new games. On average, the R&D department generates about 25 new ideas a week. To go from idea to approved product, the idea must pass through the following stages: paper screening (a 1-page document describing the idea and giving a rough sketch of the design), prototype development, testing, and a focus group. At the end of each stage, successful ideas enter the next stage. All other ideas are dropped. The following chart depicts this process, and the probability of succeeding at each stage.


The paper screening for each idea takes 2 hours of a staff member’s time. After that, there is a stage of designing and producing a prototype. A designer spends 4 hours designing the game in a computer-aided-design (CAD) package. The actual creation of the mock-up is outsourced to one of many suppliers with essentially limitless capacity. It takes 4 days to get the prototype programmed, and multiple prototypes can be created simultaneously. A staff member of the testing team needs 2 days to test an idea. Running the focus group takes 2 hours of a staff member’s time per idea, and only one game is tested in each focus group. Finally, the management team meets for 3 hours per idea to decide if the game should go into production.

Available working hours for each staff member are 8 hours per day, 5 days a week. The current staffing plan is as follows:

A. Paper screening: 3 staff members.

B. Design and Production: 4 staff members.

C. Testing: 6 staff members.

D. Focus Group: 1 staff member.

E. Final Decision: 1 management team

With the current staffing plan, how many new ideas will be put into production per week?

Expert Solution
trending now

Trending now

This is a popular solution!

steps

Step by step

Solved in 3 steps with 6 images

Blurred answer
Knowledge Booster
Process selection
Learn more about
Need a deep-dive on the concept behind this application? Look no further. Learn more about this topic, operations-management and related others by exploring similar questions and additional content below.
Similar questions
  • SEE MORE QUESTIONS
Recommended textbooks for you
Practical Management Science
Practical Management Science
Operations Management
ISBN:
9781337406659
Author:
WINSTON, Wayne L.
Publisher:
Cengage,
Operations Management
Operations Management
Operations Management
ISBN:
9781259667473
Author:
William J Stevenson
Publisher:
McGraw-Hill Education
Operations and Supply Chain Management (Mcgraw-hi…
Operations and Supply Chain Management (Mcgraw-hi…
Operations Management
ISBN:
9781259666100
Author:
F. Robert Jacobs, Richard B Chase
Publisher:
McGraw-Hill Education
Business in Action
Business in Action
Operations Management
ISBN:
9780135198100
Author:
BOVEE
Publisher:
PEARSON CO
Purchasing and Supply Chain Management
Purchasing and Supply Chain Management
Operations Management
ISBN:
9781285869681
Author:
Robert M. Monczka, Robert B. Handfield, Larry C. Giunipero, James L. Patterson
Publisher:
Cengage Learning
Production and Operations Analysis, Seventh Editi…
Production and Operations Analysis, Seventh Editi…
Operations Management
ISBN:
9781478623069
Author:
Steven Nahmias, Tava Lennon Olsen
Publisher:
Waveland Press, Inc.