† Corresponding author PLAN-IT – A GAME APPROACH TO TEACHING LAST PLANNER METHODOLOGY AND LEAN CONSTRUCTION David K. H. Chua Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore Block E1A, #07-03, 1 Engineering Drive 2, Singapore 117576 +65-6516-2195, Email: [email protected]Qui T. Nguyen † Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore Block E1A, #07-03, 1 Engineering Drive 2, Singapore 117576 +65-6516-4643, Email: [email protected]Ker-Wei Yeoh Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore Block E1A, #07-03, 1 Engineering Drive 2, Singapore 117576 +65-6516-4643, Email: [email protected]Abstract The Last Planner methodology is a paradigm shift for an industry adopting the lean construction philosophy. In Singapore it is relatively new and has been adopted in only a limited number of projects. This poses a problem to teach the students the method of the Last Planner merely through classroom instruction. In this regard, this paper presents an innovative game approach called Plan-It for inculcating the concepts of Last Planner and lean construction philosophy. Plan-It is conducted as a competition in which the individual groups are given a project plan to manage to completion. They have to come up with good constraint management strategies to achieve the shortest project schedule at the lowest cost with high Percent Plan Complete. It is a dynamic simulation-based game, which uses weekly event cards to represent project uncertainties. Microsoft Project or Primavera is used to update project performance based on the applied management strategies and the corresponding impacts of uncertainties on a “weekly” basis. The weekly event cards provide the means for designing the variability to produce the type of learning outcomes for students. To better facilitate students’ learning and reduce tedious calculations, an application called “Plan&Do” has been developed upon .NET framework and integrated with Microsoft Project 2010 to automate some complex processes of the game. With its interactive and demonstrative features, Plan-It Game has received favorable feedbacks from students on helping them improve their learning experience on the Last Planner method and lean construction philosophy. Plan&Do also provides a simulation platform for developing various strategies to manage different degrees of variability in constraints. Keywords: Project Management, Lean Construction, Last Planner, Innovative Teaching 1. INTRODUCTION Lean construction is based on the lean principles developed by Taichii Ohno in the 1950s to increase efficiency and reduce waste in the automobile production. The key concept is to Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Engineering, Project, and Production Management (EPPM 2013) 33
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† Corresponding author
PLAN-IT – A GAME APPROACH TO TEACHING LAST PLANNER METHODOLOGY AND LEAN CONSTRUCTION
David K. H. Chua
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore
The Last Planner methodology is a paradigm shift for an industry adopting the lean construction philosophy. In Singapore it is relatively new and has been adopted in only a limited number of projects. This poses a problem to teach the students the method of the Last Planner merely through classroom instruction. In this regard, this paper presents an innovative game approach called Plan-It for inculcating the concepts of Last Planner and lean construction philosophy. Plan-It is conducted as a competition in which the individual groups are given a project plan to manage to completion. They have to come up with good constraint management strategies to achieve the shortest project schedule at the lowest cost with high Percent Plan Complete. It is a dynamic simulation-based game, which uses weekly event cards to represent project uncertainties. Microsoft Project or Primavera is used to update project performance based on the applied management strategies and the corresponding impacts of uncertainties on a “weekly” basis. The weekly event cards provide the means for designing the variability to produce the type of learning outcomes for students. To better facilitate students’ learning and reduce tedious calculations, an application called “Plan&Do” has been developed upon .NET framework and integrated with Microsoft Project 2010 to automate some complex processes of the game. With its interactive and demonstrative features, Plan-It Game has received favorable feedbacks from students on helping them improve their learning experience on the Last Planner method and lean construction philosophy. Plan&Do also provides a simulation platform for developing various strategies to manage different degrees of variability in constraints.
Keywords: Project Management, Lean Construction, Last Planner, Innovative Teaching
1. INTRODUCTION Lean construction is based on the lean principles developed by Taichii Ohno in the 1950s
to increase efficiency and reduce waste in the automobile production. The key concept is to
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33
maximize three opportunities: impeccable coordination, projects as production system, and
projects as collective exercise to implement a production planning and control system in
construction (Howell, 1999). Although this philosophy has been discussed for many years,
real progress toward its significant implementation has been found to be still little. With the
amount of waste identified in the construction process, lean construction concepts should be
better explored and presented to construction management students (Johnson and Gunderson,
2009).
The Last Planner system (LPS) was developed in the United States in 1990’s (Ballard,
1994; Ballard and Howell, 1998) as a production planning and control system based upon
lean construction principles. It is a technique that shapes workflow and addresses project
variability in construction. During the past few years, the Last Planner method has been
systematically adopted in a number of contracting companies in different countries. The
results of applying this method have been most encouraging in regard to productivity,
duration and safety (Koskenvesa and Koskela, 2005). Despite this, it is found that the
introduction and implementation of the Last Planner method to a site, or a company is not an
easy process. These issues also raise various challenges for teaching this method in the
university environment.
There are very few documents in the literature specifically addressing approaches and
experiences for teaching lean construction concept and Last Planner method in universities. In
addition to lectures and explanations, simulation games are common methods for teaching the
lean thinking in different contexts. For example, Tommelein et al. (1999) introduced the
Parade Game method to teach the impact of work flow variability on the performance of
construction trades and their successors. The game consists of simulating a construction
process in which resources produced by one trade are prerequisite to work performed by the
next trade. Dukovska-Popovska et al. (2008) introduced two games for teaching lean concept.
The Lean Hospital Game which was created to reflect a healthcare context aims to give the
students/practitioners an experience with the lean way of working, having in mind that such
audiences (especially the healthcare professionals) usually do not have any knowledge about
concepts in production planning and control. The Airplane Product Game is to get the
participants to realize the power and benefits of creating flow in the working processes. Tsao
et al. (2012) used the Delta Design Game to help students the challenges if design
management and explore how lean thinking can help. Although these simulation-based games
can better illustrate different scenarios in the real situation, they are not carried out in a fully
project scale to allow learners interactively apply the lean construction concept and the Last
Planner method to planning and controlling a specific construction project throughout the
entire project’s lifecycle.
Other teaching approaches have also been employed for teaching lean concepts.
Roudebush (2007) described the implementation of lean construction fundamentals within a
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Engineering, Project, and Production Management (EPPM 2013)
34
hands-on laboratory project. Recently, Hyatt (2011) developed an undergraduate course which
integrates Lean, BIM, and sustainability concepts to provide students basic knowledge of
these trends in the industry and how they are applied in a project. In this course, the Last
Planner System’s four phases (master schedule, phase schedule, lookahead plan, and
commitment plan) were employed to detail the plans for a LEED project throughout time so
that students can learn about the significance of planning and making sound commitments
during the project’s lifecycle. Similarly, Izquierdo et al. (2011) presented a Basic Management
Functions Workshop (BMFW) to train construction company employees the lean principles of
maximizing value and reducing waste of their clients. They also suggested that real case
studies are the preferred means to teach the lean philosophy.
In Singapore, lean construction and Last Planner are relatively new and have been
adopted in only a limited number of projects. This poses a problem to teach the students these
concepts and methodologies through classroom instructions such as explanation,
demonstration of the concept using examples and case projects. Moreover, in addition to
understanding the principle processes, it is more effective for students to learn this new
paradigm through directly applying it into real scenarios and experiencing its impact upon the
project performance. In this regard, this paper presents an innovative game approach called
Plan-It for inculcating the concepts of Last Planner and lean construction philosophy so that
the students can learn the methodology and gain insight into the advantages of the new
approach. To better facilitate students’ learning and reduce tedious calculations, an application
called “Plan&Do” has been developed upon .NET framework and integrated with Microsoft
Project 2010 to automate some complex processes of the game. With its interactive and
demonstrative features, Plan-It Game has received favorable feedbacks from students on
helping them improve their learning experience on the Last Planner method and lean
construction philosophy.
2. OVERVIEW OF LEAN CONSTRUCTION AND LAST PLANNER Lean construction philosophy advocates that the construction process should be managed
as a flow instead of separate processes. Essentially, pre-requisite constraints (such as approval,
space, contract, shop drawings) are associated with non value-adding activities that dominate
most construction activities. They should be reduced or eliminated in order to minimize waste
and make the flow more efficient. The root causes of unreliable production plans could be
attributed to inferior management of such non value-adding activities.
Reducing uncertainties in the workflow requires new methodologies and tools that can
deal with other types of constraints rather than only the PROCESS constraints. The Last
Planner is a production planning tool that analyzes constraints in the processes so that weekly
work assignments can be shielded from many uncertainties. It was observed that reliable work
plans, which can be indicated by higher Percentage Plan Completion (PPC), are vital in
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achieving higher productivity. Up to 30% productivity increment is achievable when the PPC
is above 50%.
In the traditional CPM method (see Figure 1), project baselines are set and the weekly
assignment plan is derived from it whether the activity can be executed or not (notion of push
schedule). Invariably, some pre-requisite constraints are not managed and activities cannot be
executed as planned. Very quickly, the schedule becomes out-dated and the plan is highly
unreliable. PPC is generally very low – typically between 40-60%.
Figure 1: Traditional push scheduling approach
Figure 2: Last planner pull scheduling
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With the Last Planner methodology (as shown in Figure 2), a 6-week lookahead planning
discipline is incorporated. Within the lookahead, the activities (or tasks) are managed through
their pre-requisite constraints. These constraints include ensuring that approvals of materials
are obtained, shop drawings are available, safety measures and method statements are ready
etc. When these constraints are secured, the activities are considered “made ready” and are
put into the workable backlog or “CAN DO” bin. Activities are drawn from the “CAN DO”
bin to schedule in the weekly work plan which form the “WILL DO”. In this way, the weekly
work plan is highly reliable and PPC is expected to be significantly increased with
accompanying increased in productivity. In particular, a survey conducted within 77 Chilean
projects from 12 companies by Alarcon et al. (2005) shows that by implementing the Last
Planner method the average PPC of these projects increased from around 50% to around 80%
over the three year period (2001 to 2003). In addition, it also shows that productivity
improvements of up to 86% have been measured in individual project (Alarcón et al., 2000).
3. THE PLAN-IT GAME EXPLAINED The Plan-It game has been devised to teach the Lean Construction philosophy and the
Last Planner methodology for managing projects at the site level. The general approach of this
dynamic simulation-based game is shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Overview of the Plan-It game
The learning objective of the game is for students to discover the effects of variability
and constraint management on project planning. The game objective is for the individual
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groups to compete with each other to see which group is able to come up with the shortest
project schedule at the lowest cost and with highest PPC. Random weekly variability in the
project in the form of Event Cards will be given to each team at the end of each (weekly) turn
(after having made up their weekly work plan) to disrupt their project. They have to protect
their project plan by managing relevant constraints and hidden flows. If they manage them
well throughout the project they will incur little delays arising from the random events.
Otherwise, they will have to incur additional costs through crashing the activities or suffer the
cost of delays. The students are also asked to provide their own experience, lessons learnt, and
suggestions for improving the game in their final reports.
Plan-It simulates the planning and controlling of a construction project in a weekly basis.
Typically, students as planners are to produce a 6-week Lookahead (or ToDo) plan, and a
Weekly Work (or WillDo) plan, to identify and control important constraints, to apply
necessary expedition strategies and to update the impact of uncertainties to the project for
every one-week time period. In order to better reflect the real project management practices,
the Plan-It game incorporates the following innovative features.
3.1. Different Types of Activity The project given to the students consists of five different types of activities in the game
(this can be increased for greater complexity): formwork, scaffolding, reinforcement,
concreting and post-tensioning. Each of these activity types represents a specific crew (or a
subcontractor) participating in the project, and has a possible number of constraints associated
with them (the number of constraints can be increased for greater complexity). For instance, a
scaffolding activity may be affected by a manageable constraint such as safety or information
(like drawings), and/or by an unmanageable one like adverse weather condition.
3.2. Cost of Constraint Mitigation Manageable constraints should be identified and mitigated to lessen their adverse
impacts on the project performance when variations occur. No cost is required to managing a
constraint within norm duration (i.e. 1 day prior to the start time of the associated activity).
On the other hand, additional cost is applied to constraint mitigation exceeding the norm
period. Such addition cost is to reflect the realistic expenditure for extra inventory amount,
early order or reserved storage areas. This feature thereby forces the students to make
appropriate constraint analysis and tradeoff to achieve the lowest project cost.
3.3. Event Cards Simulating Project Variations Event Cards are specially designed to simulate project variations and the impact of
variations on project performance in terms of time and cost. They provide a few scenarios for
the activities. The penalty in delays and cost varies depending on whether there was any
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mitigation or if the ETA (expected time of arrival) is not large enough (if too large there is
additional cost for mitigation).
The flexibility of the event cards is a key advantage of the Plan-It game. Realistic
patterns can be incorporated in the event cards so that students will learn that constraints do
have patterns in real life. Some constraints belong to certain project parties (represented as
activity types) that do not stick closely to their ETA commitment so that project managers
should be particularly wary of them. As the game progresses, the students will begin to realize
this pattern and build their mitigation strategy based on their analysis. Various lessons can be
built into the game through the event cards.
3.4. Compression of Activity Durations for Project Expedition Plan-It allows students to compress activity durations to accelerate the project progress
and/or to mitigate the adverse time impact of constraint variations. Expenditure for duration
shortening is captured in the form of “crashing cost” which is based on activity type. By the
means of crashing cost, students can better understanding about the time-cost tradeoff concept
and its application to project control.
3.5. Scenarios for Project Comparison Students are asked to produce two scenarios for comparison: one the base schedule
without managing constraints and the second the competition schedule where the project is
appropriately managed. The comparison of these two scenarios can help students experience
the impact of good constraint management on project performance in terms of time, cost, and
PPC. By this, their understanding about lean construction and Last Planner can be further
enhanced.
4. THE Plan&Do APPLICATION The purpose of this application is to automate some of the processes in the Plan-It game
to improve the learning outcomes. In particular, it automatically updates schedule variations
(in the form of time and cost) resulting from constraint management and project uncertainties.
This application helps reduce the manual work to make the Plan-it game less tedious so that
the students’ learning can be enhanced by eliminating unnecessary peripheral activities.
Instead they could focus on learning the essence of the methodology: identifying pre-requisite
constraints and the significance of plan reliability on project performance. In this way, the
learning process will be more cognitive and interactive.
4.1. System Architecture The system architecture of Plan&Do is depicted in Figure 4. This application is
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developed upon the .NET Framework platform using C# language. It comprises two main
groups of functions: (1) Schedule Control Functions of the analysis engine assisting the
Planner with generating plans, managing constraints and analyzing event cards; and (2) GUI
Functions facilitating the editing project data, and exchanging input/output data from and to
Microsoft Project 2010 and Microsoft Excel 2010. All project data are stored in a database
built upon the Microsoft Access 2010 application.
Figure 4: System architectural framework of the Plan&Do application
4.2. Play the PlanIt Game with Plan&Do application
Figure 5: System workflow of the Plan&Do application
The schedule is managed and controlled in a weekly basis. The workflow of each cycle
comprises six main steps as described in Figure 5. The students act as the Planner and focus
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on steps 2 and 3 which are the main management tasks. In these steps the plan is carefully
analyzed and the important constraints are identified. If these are carefully executed, project
cost and schedule can be tightly controlled.
4.2.1. Step 1 – Generate Project Plan Each cycle starts with the generation of a Project Plan from the updated project schedule
created in MSP2010. This Project Plan describes the status (time and cost) of the project at the
current planning time. It is imported from MSP2010 and displayed in the form of a Gantt
chart. Blue, orange and cyan colors are used to respectively display completed, in-progress,
and not-started activities as illustrated in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Project Plan shown in Plan&Do
4.2.2. Step 2 – Generate ToDo Plan
A ToDo Plan which is a 6-week lookahead plan is generated from the associated Project
Plan to include all activities whose start or finish time happens in a 6-week timespan which is
specified by the Planner (see Figure 7). Then, the Planner identifies all necessary constraints
that need to be resolved, via a constraint management window as shown in Figure 8. The
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Planner can also specifies the compressed activities and the crashing amount. To better reflect
the real practice, this game requires that activity durations cannot be compressed more than
30% of their planned duration.
Figure 7: Selected activities are copied from Project Plan to generate a new ToDo plan
Figure 8: Identify constraints need to be managed
4.2.3. Step 3 – Generate WillDo Plan
When all necessary management strategies have been applied to activities in the ToDo
Plan, a WillDo (weekly work) plan is automatically generated. It contains all activities whose
start and finish times are planned to happen in a 1-week timespan. The Planner can add in
new or remove existing constraints, and/or revise the activity crashing strategy.
4.2.4. Step 4 – Analyze Event Card
A report will be generated from the WillDo Plan and submitted to the Event Card System
so that an associated event card (in Excel format) is released for downloading. Each event
card simulates the uncertainties happening to the project during the examined period. The
impacts of such uncertainties on the project in terms of cost and time are determined by
comparing the applied constraint management strategies and the uncertainties (see Figure 9).
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This comparison and analysis process is made automatically in Plan&Do. The output of this
step is the amount of additional cost and delay (if any) that could occur in the activities in the
WillDo plan. The WillDo plan is automatically updated subsequently.
Figure 9: Result of event card analysis
4.2.5. Step 5 – Generate Updated Schedule
The analysis of an event card, which is downloaded from the event card system in Step 4,
can determine the impacts of uncertainties to only individual activities. Their impacts on the
successor activities and the project duration are determined by updating them to the original
MSP schedule. This output of this step is a newly generated MSP schedule consisting of all
variations identified in the previous step.
4.2.6. Step 6 – Draw PPC Chart
Finally, the updated schedule is compared with the planned schedule for weekly progress
evaluation and computation. From that, the PPC (Percentage Performance Complete) chart is
drawn to describe work progress of the week (as illustrated in Figure 10).
Figure 10: PPC Chart of 3 weeks
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5. EVALUATION AND LESSONS LEARNT After the completion of the exercise, an online survey was conducted to evaluate the
impact of the game on the learning outcomes. The students were asked to give their feedback
on the achieved learning components and their experience with the game. The questionnaire
was devised using a Likert scale. The result is compiled and shown in Table 1, where upper
and lower rows respectively indicate the percentage of the responses for this year with the use
of Plan&Do application and last year without Plan&Do application.
Overall there was a good feedback on the game. Over 75% and in some items over 85%
agree or strongly agree that they have learned the various concepts of the new planning and
control methodology. With respect to overall experience, 67% finds that the game attempts to
reflect real life situation through the event cards and over 71% thought that they had an
overall positive experience from the perspective of learning the Last Planner and compression
of activities. There were many positive lessons learnt from the students.
Table 1: Students’ learning outcomes achieved from the game
Rank Strongly
Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly
Agree
The Last Planner methodology 1 (5.2%)
2 (8.3%)
1 (5.2%)
0 (0%)
2 (10.5%)
4 (16.6%)
11 (57.8%)
10 (41.6%)
4 (21%)
8 (33.3%)
Notion of lookahead 1 (5.2%)
1(4.1%)
0 (0%)
1(4.1%)
2 (10.5%)
2 (8.3%)
11 (57.8%)
13 (54.1%)
5 (26.3%)
7(29.1%)
Importance of constraints management 1 (5.2%)
2 (8.3%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
2 (10.5%)
3 (12.5%)
10 (52.6%)
8 (33.3%)
6 (31.5%)
11 (45.8%)
The notion of PPC 1 (5.2%)
1 (4.1%)
0 (0%)
2 (8.3%)
0 (0%)
3 (12.5%)
14 (73.6%)
13 (54.1%)
3 (15.7%)
5 (37.5%)
The impact of missing constraints 1 (5.2%)
2 (8.3%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
3 (15.7%)
2 (8.3%)
10 (52.6%)
8 (33.3%)
5 (26.3%)
12 (50%)
The relation between potential delay and
cost to expedite
1 (5.2%)
2 (8.3%)
0 (0%)
0 (0%)
3 (15.7%)
2 (8.3%)
9 (47.3%)
8 (33.3%)
6 (31.5%)
12 (50%)
The survey result also shows that the percentage of preferable answers (Agree and
Strongly Agree) this year (with the use of Plan&Do application) was increased and the
number of disagreeable answers (Strongly Disagree and Disagree) was reduced. The increase
indicates the advantage of the Plan&Do application in improving the learning outcomes. In
particular, 78.8% of the answers agree that the game promotes their learning on the Last
Planner methodology, which was increased by 3.9% compared with last year. Similarly,
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Engineering, Project, and Production Management (EPPM 2013)
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82.1% of the answers (compared with 79.1% of the answers from last year) acknowledge that
the game helps their learning the importance of constraints management. Plan&Do with its
automated processes has helped students focus on the critical tasks, and has promoted
learning of the new paradigm.
Despite the improvement in learning outcomes, the survey on the game experience
shown in Table 2 continues to indicate the need of a more automated and simplified game.
This is probably due to the existence of some bugs during this first implementation of
Plan&Do. However, these bugs have been removed and the experience can be expected to
improve. In addition, the format and content of event card which results in “non-preferable”
feedback on the real life reflection of the game can be changed in future sessions so that better
learning points can be achieved. This is possible with the flexible design of the event cards to
facilitate such learning environment.
In contrast to the disagreeable feedbacks on the software, the overall positive experience
on the game was increased from 70.8% last year to 78.9% this year, showing that the
development and implementation of Plan&Do application did have some good impact on the
students’ awareness and learning on core concepts of constraint and schedule management.
Table 2: Students’ experiences with the game
Rank Percentage
Difficult because process is not automated 13 (68.4%)
9 (37.5%)
Learning can be better promoted if some processes are automated 10 (52.6%)
10 (41.6%)
Game attempts to reflect real life situation through the event cards 9 (47.3%)
16 (66.6%)
From the perspective of learning the Last Planner and compression of activities, I
have overall positive experience
15 (78.9%)
17 (70.8%)
Students were also asked to express their personal reflections on the game and Plan&Do
application in their final reports, and valuable comments and recommendations were obtained.
Most students agreed that the game was an enriching experience and did help them to
understand the concept and fundamentals behind it. It was also evident from their reports that
through the game the students could recognize and comprehend the importance and impact of
proper constraint management on project performance. They also suggested that Plan&Do
should be improved with more automated processes so that it can be more useful for future
students. Some students’ responses suggested that event cards should be revised to better
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Engineering, Project, and Production Management (EPPM 2013)
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simulate real construction environment.
6. CONCLUSION This paper presents an innovative game-based method called Plan-It for teaching the
concepts of lean construction and Last Planner in a university environment. Plan-It is
conducted as a competition in which the individual groups have to plan and manage a given
project by coming up with good constraint management strategies to achieve the shortest
project schedule at the lowest cost with high PPC. The key advantages of this dynamic
simulation-based game lie in the incorporation of cost for extra constraint management, the
integration of constraint management and time-cost tradeoff, and the use of weekly event
cards to simulate the uncertainties happening to the project. In essence, event cards provide
the means for flexibly designing the variability to produce the type of learning outcomes for
students. Moreover, by being played at a project scale, Plan-It can help student clearly
observe the benefits of proper constraint management and project control to the entire project
from three important perspectives: time, cost, and productivity (PPC).
To better facilitate students’ learning and reduce tedious calculations, an application
called “Plan&Do” has been developed upon .NET framework and integrated with Microsoft
Project 2010 to automate some complex processes of the game. Specifically, Plan&Do
automates major data exchanging process and provides a simplified platform for the students
to play the game. It also provides a simulation platform for developing various strategies to
manage different degrees of variability in constraints.
With its interactive and demonstrative features, Plan-It Game has received favorable
feedbacks from students on helping them improve their learning experience on the Last
Planner method and lean construction philosophy. The adoption of Plan&Do also helps
enhance their understanding about these concepts. However, as the first implementation,
Plan&Do contained some bugs which probably affected the students’ positive feedback. There
are other aspects of the game to be improved on. This include the design of the type of events
(as represented in the event cards), the network schedule for students to control, the type of
constraints, and the cost or penalty functions to emphasize different aspects of project
outcomes. In addition, the game is presently played in a small group with each member
contributing to the group’s performance. It could possibly be modified to allow for multiple
agents in the project which will make the game more realistic.
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