Mrs Louise Ratcliffe | Business Teacher

As our attention turned to Operations Management this week in Senior Business, Year 11 students engaged in “Operation Build”.

In an activity that tested their resource management skills, students were given an allocation of raw materials (including marshmallows, spaghetti and sticky tape) and were tasked with building a small scale “structure” that would keep out the elements.

On completion, the structures were rated on their use of the allocated resources (efficiency) and how well the structure met the task objectives (effectiveness).

Then the CEO (AKA Mrs Ratcliffe) dropped in with a surprise announcement that costs had to be cut by 20%.  Students then had to rationalise their materials without compromising the integrity of the structure; they achieved this with varying levels of success!