Revisiting Slick Oil: A simple game to quickly show the value of optimization
Including Excel version of Slick Oil and an additional bonus factory planning exercise
LLamasoft and Opex Analytics (now part of Coupa) created Slick Oil 5 years ago.
I’ve successfully used Slick Oil in my introduction class to Optimization. It takes about 5-15 minutes to cover, depending on your style.
It is a nice way to answer the question, “why do I need optimization (linear programming)?”
In the Slick Oil game, it is easy to identify two bad rules of thumb for getting an answer. Then, it is easy to devise a rule of thumb that seems like it would solve the problem.
However, capacity constraints throw a wrench in things. The game is small enough that it is possible to find the optimal answer. But, it takes some time. Because it takes time on a small problem and is not a simple rule, it is easy to convince students that they need a robust approach. You can tell them that Linear Programming is that approach.
The game used to be online. Since it no longer is and people are still using it, here are two spreadsheets you can use to play the game in your classroom.
The Basic version is all manual (which is probably what you want to give the students). The one with OpenSolver has a model built that has linear programming (you could do this with the built-in Excel solver, but I like OpenSolver better).
At the time, Sara Hoormann wrote some guides on SC Digest and Medium (the PDF is below if this site doesn’t work). Don’t worry if some of the links in those articles are broken; you’ll have enough to run the game.
As another 5th anniversary bonus, I posted about an exercise I use from Wally Hopp and Mark Spearman’s Factory Physics class.
This game has a simple factory that makes parts A and B in a factory with three machines, as seen in the picture.
Here is the data for the problem.
It is fun to figure out the best production plan in class. It is even more fun to see if the students can figure out the intuition of why the solution is better. Again, linear programming can help find the optimal answer.
(I have many other ideas for simple educational games— if you like to build these, let me know.)
Hi Michael, I LOVED the slick oil game. I used to pull it out at every possible opportunity, teaching new modellers and stakeholders alike about what it is we're actually doing. I miss it sorely, since it's not available at the original URL (http://llamasoft.opexanalytics.com/). Is it available anywhere else? These days I just use the PDF and solve in Excel, but the old interactive interface was more fun. Hope you're well, Hagen