This has been one of the most hectic days of my MBA life so far. And I suspect that term 2 is going to be this busy the whole period. Wow.. I am loving it.
We had a simulation exercise today which started with a submission of a project plan etc in the morning followed by the project simulation which involved a lot of running around, number crunching, trending, charting, planning, replanning, allocating resources, re-scoping, and more !!! We, in teams of 6, needed to plan to build a warehouse using optimum resources with maximising profit being the aim (a proportion of credits depend on that). We planned for 14 weeks of activity, allocated labourers needed, calculated overheads and other costs, loans needed, repayment schedule, equipment/materials/cranes needed and lot more. Each week is sped up in 15-20 minutes by the simulation software and we get the progress of work after each week, after which we re-allocate taking into consideration the random delays the software puts in, and other incidentals.
8AM :Review project plan, collate documents, print and submit at 8:45
0845: Simulation Starts.
1000 : Already in the middle of the project and experiencing lots of delays in procurement etc. Our planning skills put to test.
1100 : First major disruption in plan - increase in scope. An unplanned activity comes up, everything else gets delayed by 2 weeks alteast.
1200 : Anothe major change, 2 of us have been deallocated from the project and people from different teams have replaced them for an hour. We managed it well as no one was indispensible in the team - good project management !.
1400 : All look good even after delays, but there are huge cost overruns because of delays.
1600: We finish with a positive profit figure but very low from what we expected earlier. Disappointment dawns. Damn it !
1700 : We also have to present the results, variances, and learning tomorrow and so we continued with preparing for presentations. And yes, for lunch people grabbed what they could get hold of and kept working.
1900 : IBE briefings were also squeezed in for today in the timetables and so we had to attend those as well. International Business Experience (IBE) is a programme of one week where we visit various companies and institutions in a different country (in June). I will be going to Vietnam !
0000: Finished preparing for presentations after that, and its 12 midnight now. Need to hit the sack as it will be an early start tomorrow at 0830 for presentations.
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