Finding appropriate interactive exercises to increase students' learning in technical topic courses is always challenging to educators. In this study, several paper plane hands-on simulation exercises were developed, used, and tested in a lean manufacturing course for beginning college students. A pretest and posttest was used to assess the effectiveness of students learning of lean manufacturing concepts by means of participating in the hands-on simulation exercises. Furthermore, the procedures used for an efficient integration of the hands-on simulation exercises into a teaching environment were evaluated. The results showed that students' knowledge of lean manufacturing concepts increased significantly compared with lecture-based learning only. (Contains 5 figures and 5 tables.)