Students soar to success in Operational Management course.

Chris Ellis, Operational Management instructor, evaluates planes before making a buying decision.

The image of paper planes flying around a classroom may bring to mind naughty elementary school children. But, in Operational Management, taught by Chris Ellis (EMBA ’97, BS ’92), instructor, Department of Decision Sciences and Information Systems, those airborne craft represent a lot of effort and teamwork.

Students in the course form teams and create a plane manufacturing facility from the ground up. In four, thirty-minute timed sessions—each representing a business quarter—production groups work on planes. Functional roles include measuring, folding, gluing, coloring, and cutting.

“At the end of each quarter, each fifteen-person group would count its inventory to determine what was work in process, what it needed to order, what the expenses were, and what the return on investment was,” said Nitza Manes, manager, planning and inventory control department at Sony, who is a junior majoring in marketing. “Ellis compared them and declared a winner, looking at who exceeded expenses, who had the biggest gross profit, who was bringing in too much via air freight, who had too much raw material in inventory, and other factors. We knew the first quarter would be expensive because we were setting up and purchasing tools and machinery. After that, our numbers were expected to improve.” 

A student in Operational Management carefully crafts a paper plane in a hands-on exercise to learn how to set up and run a manufacturing plant.

Ellis provided the engineering plans for fifteen different models from which the teams devised ways to mass produce them. Some of the models had several pieces to cut and fold before the assemblers could put the plane together. At the end of each session, he inspected the final planes and selected the ones he would purchase.

“He had very high standards, so we needed to make the planes perfectly,” Manes said. “If it wasn’t colored correctly, for example, he would discount the price and purchase the product for scrap. If there was a tie, he would make us fly the planes before making a buying decision.”

Pedro Costa, a senior marketing major who works fulltime as the export manager for an import/export company, considers himself lucky to have taken the course.

“No one told me about the plane game,” he said. “I got lucky. It was the best class I have ever taken at Florida International University.”

Content gives students ideal combination of theory and practice.

The first hour of class time in this blended course, which combined online quizzes with classroom discussion/activity time, revolved around a book called The Goal.

Students in Operational Management class.

“The book made sense from a business perspective,” Costa said, “while the plane game helped us learn from direct experience. Among other things, we had to train ourselves on processes—such as where the paper goes first. This taught us how to discuss business processes, which we had read about.”

Even though classroom sessions took place only every other week, Costa and his group met weekly, and on some weekends, as did other teams.

“We studied how the game worked, we planned, and we thought of ways we could better ourselves,” he said.

Course teaches far more than plane-making.

The students learned training skills, as well as how to motivate and communicate with others, how to build teams, and to build planes.

Lina Sánchez, a senior majoring in accounting and entrepreneurship who handles bookkeeping services in a CPA office and who was a folder, served as a team leader even though she was the youngest person in her group.

“I learned to set priorities and how to manage people,” she said. “It was hard to get everyone together because of schedules, but I learned that although something may be simple, you need to establish a plan and stick with it.”

Students in Operational management carefully craft paper planes in a hands-on exercise to learn how to set up and run a manufacturing plant.

Manes agreed that team dynamics took careful attention.

“As team leader, I had to schedule outside group meetings, coordinate team members, and meet with people to resolve problems,” she said. “There were different levels of interest, attitude, and age in addition to varying vacation schedules and personal commitments. We formed subgroups and made them responsible for their own group of four or five, which was much better than trying to manage fifteen people.”

In addition to honing team-building skills, Costa finds that he applies what he learned in the course to his job.

“It’s not that I do something specific, but I will remember something from class and then the whole lesson comes back,” he said.