As part of the ICM curriculum, students experienced the work of a process engineer in an operations/production assistant role through a one-hour role-playing game. A virtual marshmallow teddy bear coating unit was set up for a morning at the SPIN center…
The objective of the serious game for students was to experience working in a high-pressure context: they had to mobilize their technical knowledge and understand the communication rules between the various stakeholders: not only between engineers but also between engineers and technicians to find and implement a solution.
Discovering the profession of production engineer
The game reproduces a factory’s pilot unit for chocolate-coating marshmallow teddy bears. The day’s production is dedicated to manufacturing a “ready for sale” batch of organic milk chocolate-coated teddy bears. During production, several deviations in process parameters and the presence of defective teddy bears are identified.
The students / production engineers must face this problem, understand it, and resolve it. They are accompanied by a game master who plays the role of pilot technician and by an observer.
The game ends when the process parameters have returned to normal or when the one-hour time limit is reached.
Capitalizing on feedback
Participants quickly stepped into their roles as engineers and found the information necessary to correct the deviations. The solutions provided and the reasoning were different for each group.
Suggestions were proposed such as taking into account the financial and economic impact of the problem; a possible scenario by increasing the duration of the exercise.
The debriefing highlighted the richness of this role-playing game on the production engineer profession, which was developed by a team composed of teacher-researchers, an instructional designer, and an external process engineer.
The exercise took place within the framework of the E-LEGO Toolbox: Software Study in Process Engineering and the non-virtual production of the morning was dedicated to tasting!
Contacts: Ana Cameirão, Head of the Processes for the Environment and Geo-resources Department, SPIN center
