Laboratorio de tintura

A 90-minute, 4-round basic Express simulation for Spanish vocational training (Formacion Profesional), Textil, Confeccion y Piel family: module 1042 Preparacion y tintura (Tecnico en Fabricacion y Ennoblecimiento de Productos Textiles, Real Decreto 1591/2011) and module 0444 Procesos de ennoblecimiento y estampacion (Tecnico Superior en Diseno Tecnico en Textil y Piel, Real Decreto 1580/2011).

The learner is a newly qualified dyeing technician given her first order to see through in a fictional commission dyehouse of a fictional town in the province of Alicante: twelve lots of cotton jersey in one shade, the week after the client returned three.

Eight decisions over four rounds: how the rejected lots are diagnosed, which dyes go into the recipe, how the bath is made up, how the salt and the alkali go in, which temperature curve is run, what is checked before the bath is dropped, how the lots are washed off and how each lot is released.

Scored on good lots delivered on their date, process cost, colour difference and lots with a defect; two tempting choices hide their cost until the lots are measured, and two critical errors (the lid lock overridden to pour the alkali in by hand, a colour report filled in with the readings of another lot) cap the round.

Lesson: reproducing the colour from lot to lot means controlling the whole process, not only the recipe. Training level only. Spanish primary, English parity. All companies, towns and people are fictional.

An introductory simulation that assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, designed for undergraduate courses. It also works in vocational and high-school programmes and in onboarding sessions.