Activity Name: Running a Factory
Author: adapted by Yoo Jin Chung and Kate Fraser
Adapted from: Introduction to Technology, Glencoe / McGraw-Hill
by Alan J. Pierce, Dennis Karwatka
Target Subject: Technology/engineering
Purpose: To understand general steps of setting up and running a
small company.
Background Information: What will you do when you have a good
idea for a new product, or an innovation for an existing product?
Suppose you have an idea for a new board game for two to four
players. The game requires a board, differently shaped buttons for
each player, and cards with questions. You want to manufacture and
sell the board game yourself.
Preparation: This is an activity for a team of students to do together.
For the student with a visual impairment, advanced preparation might
include examining the variety of possible materials to be used and
practice using scissors. All activities in this activity are accessible.
Materials: Poster board, glue, scissor, index cards or Braille paper,
things to write with or a brailler, dice, felt, puff paint, etc. Anything you
decide to use make your board game! Also a Braille note taker,
computer, or pencil and paper to conduct market surveys.
Procedure:
1. With your team, plan a game and its layout. Use your
imagination and be creative!
2. Maybe people would like your product enough to buy it. To ask
for opinions from other people, you talk to your friends and
teachers. They give you feedback on what they think and how
they think you can improve the game. You have conducted
market research, finding out what people will buy.
3. Make a rough prototype of the game, and test it out with your
friends. After the trial run, see if there is any change that you
can make to make the game better.
4. You can create the playing surface on cardboard, but you can’t
make the heavy cardboard back for the playing board; you
would have to buy the material. You talk to the manufacturer of
heavy cardboard, and he says that the can make 100
cardboard backs for $1.50 each. You also need to buy the
packaging for your game board. You decide a pizza box has a
perfect size to hold your game board and game pieces. You
decide to cover the top of the box later with the logo of your
game. The owner of local pizza shop says he can supply you
the boxes for $0.90 per box.
Both the cardboard manufacturer and the pizza shop owner are
your suppliers. A supplier is a person or a company that
provides something you would need to manufacture a product.
You also want to sell your game. You talk with various stores in
your town, and three of them agree to have your game in their
store to sell.
5. The cardboard manufacturer requires you to buy at least 100
cardboard backs. You make a budget based on manufacturing
100 games, such as:
100 cardboard game backs, $1.50 each = $150
100 pizza boxes, $0.90 each
= $ 90
400 buttons, $0.10 each
= $ 40
50 felt sheets for decorating, 2.00 each = $100
other art supplies
= $ 75
TOTAL
= $455
Imagine that your parents go to the bank with you, and help you
borrow $455 to create your product. Now, you have capital of
$455.
6. You ask your two suppliers to send you ten cardboard game
backs and ten pizza boxes every week for ten weeks. You don’t
have a lot of room to store things at home, so you want to
receive these items just in time for you to make the board
games and send them off to the stores. This is called just-in-
time (JIT) delivery method. Many manufacturers use just-intime delivery system, because they don’t need extra warehouse
space and workers to manage items.
7. You get your materials together to create and decorate your
playing surface. By creating the board game, you have added
value to the materials you have used.
8. Game pieces that malfunction will negatively affect a person’s
game experience. You carefully inspect each playing surface
you finish, to make sure every aspect of your game is perfect.
This inspection is called quality assurance or quality control.
Quality assurance is important because it lets you use the
information about your manufacturing system, whether it is
working smoothly or not.
9. It’s time to assemble the parts of the game, and you ask one of
your friends to help. For his/her hard work, you decide to pay
him/her $2.00 for every hour he/she works for you. This is
called wage, a payment a worker (your friend) receives from
the employer (you). You place four different shaped buttons for
each player in a small plastic bag. You add a pack of question
cards, and then pass the bag to your friend. You friend places
the game board, instructions and other game pieces into the
pizza box. He/she also glues a piece of paper with your game
logo on the top of the pizza box. You and your friend are
working like a person would in an assembly line of a factory.
Resources:
Introduction to Technology, 3rd Edition. 2005, Chapter 16, pages
385 - 401