Projects
The "Project story boards" here are examples of our Custom FutureView™ operational learning simulations. All are derived from WTRI’s primary 3-part Technology Platform, an outcome of our basic research identifying the keys to accelerating “deep” learning and the re-programming of intuitive decision-making.
The presentations will show you how WTRI develops Custom learning simulations for industry.
Copper
Mining
The Copper Mine had a straightforward, but daunting challenge: They
would need to quadruple mine output in the next five years. They had the
opportunity to become a more significant part of the parent company’s
overall success, particularly as a center of excellence in a new mining
method. But they first had to prove they could achieve significant
growth.
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storyboard
WTRI goes to China
for Supply Chain
Proved that cultural differences are not a barrier to engagement or learning
when a methodology with cutting edge virtual tools is used.
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IBM Global Business Services - 3D Rehearsal
Proved that the marriage of sophisticated Operational Simulation methodology with cutting edge virtual tools can greatly benefit IBM employees who participate.
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San Diego City Schools
Improving education through improvements in administration
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The Monroe Plan for Health
By partnering with the Monroe Plan, practices discovered ways to query claim history databases to identify at-risk patients, and they used this information to proactively develop care plans and bring patients in for ongoing preventive care, thereby reducing costs per patient and improving health outcomes.
Foundry
These images show how we developed an operational simulation for foundry workers who needed to change the way they planned their work.
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Transit
Just getting the software and hardware to work does not always make a successful implementation. This transit property had been using the software for over 3 years when they discovered that the data was not accurate enough to use to document a warranty problem.
Online Learning
Eighty teachers were asked to develop their courses in departmental teams over a period of eight days using on-line software during a professional development week at the school. The school had had the online course software for two years, but it was largely ignored by these same faculty. WTRI scored each course every 24 hours, as it was being developed and put on-line.
Medical Device
"We undertook the simulation at a crucial juncture of our business. The challenges we faced (poor cash flow and a near death marketing experience) required dramatic improvement in cross-functional communication and improved effectiveness in decision-making and output across each function and the entire management team...While we were all skeptical of the simulation at first, at the end of day two the entire team saw the value of what they experienced." Tom Wilder, MTI President
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We design all our interventions with a thorough understanding of:
- how the business is currently accomplishing it's goals,
- what target goals are needed for its survival or improved performance, and
- what current practices, ways of thinking or assumptions about effectiveness are competing with the target goals. These are often referred to “legacy” practices or features of company “culture”.
To view the pictures and text from each of the projects represented here, click on the project and then use the buttons on the project page to navigate through each presentation.
Important principles built into our simulations:
Feedback
The research we have been doing for the past several years indicates that people alter their thinking and behavior the most in response to detailed information on the consequences of their decisions and actions to factors such as costs, time spent, and contribution to concrete goals. For example, a simple ongoing tally of the cost in dollars of rework on a job-by-job basis greatly reduced the number of times workers relied on rework to ensure quality. Visibility into the costs of rework focused their attention on doing the job right the first time. This kind of “neutral” feedback was found to be more powerful than incentives, evaluations and even praise for good work. We have used this and many other findings on workplace learning and performance to design simulations that go way beyond most simulation exercises.
Time pressure
Our research has shown that learning under the pressure of having to accomplish a goal by a specific time is the usual environment in which people develop their most valuable skills and knowledge of the work they do. More importantly, skills or ways of thinking that have been acquired this way can only really be “unlearned” or altered by “relearning” under a similar goal-oriented time pressure. This is a form of “state dependent” learning. We have all had the experience of learning new methods of doing our work or looking at problems with a new paradigm in a leisurely seminar. We all believe we have changed and learned until we go back to work and try to apply these things. More often than not, when we go back to the pressures of the workplace, we default to the old ways of doing and thinking. Our work suggests that when the seminar is stressful, dynamic and problem solving oriented in the same way as real work is, we transfer the new learning back to work much more easily. It becomes our new “default” mode of working and thinking.
