Cincinnati Seasonings

Introduction

Cincinnati Seasonings is a supply chain scenario in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) Globe site. The objective of the exercise is to simulate some of the decisions that a real world supply chain manager might be faced with. In this simulation, we made decisions in each of the different weeks from 2 through to 9. Decisions were varied, in diverse realms related to supply chain management such as inventory management, transportation, warehouse locations and adjustments to supply and demand assumptions. The aim was to balance the need for low operating costs, having enough inventory but not too much (low inventory costs) and so on. The aim was to run the simulation for a period of 20-30 days in order to serve as an introduction to the field of supply chain management and get a deep dive into some of the complexities involved in achieving supply chain management targets.

Overview of Cincinnati Seasonings

Cincinnati Seasonings markets a product called the Spicy Cube in the Midwestern United States. In this simulation, the company only has this one product. There were a number of different facilities for the company in the simulation retail stores, warehouses and factories. There were vehicle options, both trucks and airplanes, that could be used to get the Spicy Cube to market. The objective was to evaluate the baseline level of the companys supply chain operations and then make recommendations for improvement. After that, the recommendations would be evaluated based on the outputs of the simulation, providing a realistic look at the types of feedback that a supply chain manager would have to deal with.

The Initial Supply Chain Scenario

In the initial scenario, Cincinnati Seasonings is based in Cincinnati, and that is where the factory is. The company has a warehouse in that city as well, and it uses that warehouse to distribution throughout the Midwest. Other facilities included a Fort Wayne warehouse, a Louisville warehouse, Seasonings DC warehouse, the Indianapolis retail store and the seasonings factory. The initial scenario was to run for 30 days, to see how well the decisions that the student made would play out.

Each store, or location had both a production capacity and a demand, so the first step was to think about which facilities had surplus production and which did not. There were costs associated with each location as well, and these needed to be taken into account, because cost management is one of the most important aspects of the simulation....

There were also five different trucks of three different sizes.

These trucks were to be assigned to a different route, taking into account the costs associated with those routes, the capacity of the trucks, and the level of excess demand or production at each of the different facilities. There was also the question of the frequency of the deliveries.

An example of a problem that needed to be addressed is that the Cincinnati factory produced 10,000 per day and had zero demand. Conversely, the Louisville store had high demand of 7500/day but very low production. In fact, the starting point had more production/day than there was demand/day, a fairly obvious constraint on supply chain management, if it is assumed that the factory will run full-time. There were initial settings in terms of having a price, weight and size for each Spicy Cube.

Accomplishments:

The initial run of the simulation did not last long, but the objective was to make adjustments and see if the simulation could be made to run to the target length of time. Some initial calculations could provide a sense of direction but the process also included a lot of trial and error. Essentially,...

…way, and celebrated a couple of nice victories. So there was a lot of good to this simulation. That said, I do have a couple of recommendations.

The first is to make sure that the students have the opportunity to build on this experience and really bake in some of the lessons. That means follow-ups or another simulation maybe. I learned a lot, but those lessons will stick better with a bit of repetition. So take any concept that I learned I may have applied a concept once here. But in another situation that concept could look different. So being able to recognize how concepts manifest in the real world, and apply lessons learned across different situations, would be a pretty powerful way to make sure the insights and lessons from Cincinnati Seasonings stick.

Another recommendation that I would have is to make sure that students take the time to reflect each week. Sometimes life is hectic and you just run through a couple of adjustments, but actually having to sit down and write about the simulation is really helpful. Just doing this has allowed me to contextualize some of the things that I did, or could have done. Formalizing opportunities to reflect on learnings, each week, will definitely help. Maybe more talking with other students so if someone does something really well, that it could be shared. That way, were not just learning from our own experience but from the experiences of our peers as well, would be really valuable.

But all told, I think the simulation was great. I learned a lot from it, and the fact that you are put right into the shoes of someone doing supply chain management for a living really added value to the concepts that we learned in class. I would definitely recommend that…