One of the games I like to facilitate is the Paper Airplane Factory game with my team, and it is a great way to explore how managing Work In Progress (WIP) affects our productivity, quality, and flow. Here’s how the game works and the lessons we learned about WIP limits:
The Setup
The idea of the game is to create a paper airplane factory. Each “factory” has four stations (5 team members per factory) :
Station 1️⃣ : Fold the paper in half.
Station 2️⃣: Creates the airplane nose by folding triangles on each side.
Station 3️⃣: Sharpens the nose, partially folds the wings, and adds a star design.
Station 4️⃣ : Completes wing folds and tests flight across the table.
Member number 5 controls the cycle time and tracks the WIP.
The Goal? Complete 15 airplanes in two rounds, tracking WIP, cycle time, and total time at each stage. You have 2 rounds:
Round 1: work as fast as possible
Round 2: the same but there will be a limit of 1 for each station.
Key Takeaways
In the first round without WIP limits, planes piled up, quality dropped, and chaos reigned. But with WIP limits, the transformation was clear:
Better Quality: Fewer planes at each station meant more attention to detail.
Smoother Flow: Balanced work across stations reduced bottlenecks.
Faster Delivery: Lower cycle time led to faster completion with fewer errors.
Limiting WIP shows how focus and balance drive quality and efficiency—less chaos, more progress!
#Agile#Lean#PaperAirplaneFactoryGame#WIPLimits#TeamProductivity#CycleTime
