Tag: BUS 499 Spring 2021

Team Andrews Capsim Project

Within the business simulation, Team Andrews sought to provide state of the art technology at reasonable prices, with priortizing the ever-changing wants and needs of our customers. We implemented both a niche cost strategy and a differentiation strategy to create desirable products. Our three products included Able, After, and Alpha in which each focused on different segments of the market. We based our weekly decisions and measured our succes on the following: Sales, ROS, leverage, contribution margin and market share. We prioritized employee training hours and recruiting expenditures. In the end, Able was our cash cow, our other products remained stable and we never had to take out an emergency loan. 

BUS 499, Business Strategy and Policy
Dave Quirk

Microsoft Teams

9 – 11:30 AM

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Team Chester Capsim Final Presentation

Chester has offered reliable products to mainstream customers over the past 8 weeks. Our brands offer value by providing unique, affordable options to fit our customer’s lifestyle and needs. We adopted a Cost Leader with a Product Lifecycle Focus, which gains a competitive advantage by keeping R&D, production and material costs to a minimum, enabling it to compete on the basis of price. Our products included Cake, Cookie, Cupcake, and Cracker. We have a clear understanding of how our strategy and mission statement relate to our execution, along with how much we aligned our decisions to them. We delivered all relevant information necessary for full understanding on our strategy, and included what we could have done different. Dissection and evaluation of our Product Life Cycles is both thorough and extensive and includes both our success and failure. We spend time looking into our Human Resources, and how HR and Automation, Payroll issues, Retention/attrition issues, and Training $$$ Spent (among others) did over the course our life in relation to each other. Our critique of foundation company success measures is thorough, and we dive into what we have learned about our strategy over the course (both the good and bad). In closing, we make final year projections and wrap up the overall success of the Chester Sensor Company. We project that Chester will end strong in R&D, Marketing, Production, and Finance, and is set to continue growing and building through the foreseeable future.

BUS 499, Business Strategy and Policy

Dave Quirk

Microsoft Teams

9 – 11:30 AM

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Baldwin Sensors

Throughout this presentation we will be going in depth of our teams journey throughout the past eight weeks of running a business. We will be covering our mission statement, business strategy, the products we created and their life cycles, the positioning of those products, success measures, HR findings, and what we project to come from our business. Throughout this whole process we created two products in two different market segments, high tech and low tech, and did what we thought was best in order to make those products and our business succeed.

BUS 499, Business Strategy and Policy
Dave Quirk

Microsoft Teams

9 – 11:30 AM

Return to schedule

Team Digby BUS499 Capstone Simulation

Mission Statement

The Digby Company is focused on creating a series of both high-tech and low-tech products to suit the needs of all customers.

Strategy

Digby prioritizes investment in research and development to support innovation which exceeds consumer expectations on multiple price levels.

Product Life Cycles

The starting price for our product Diesel was set at 45$ per unit, with specifications regarding performance and size set at 7.4 (performance) and 12.6 (size). The first shift capacity for Diesel was set at 350 units. The investment approach towards marketing regarding promotion and budget were moderate. We have classified Diesel as our secondary product with Daze as the primary product. Diesel would be considered closer to the high-tech end of the industry. Diesel’s positioning was placed slightly ahead on the perceptual map. 

The starting price for our product Daze was set at $35 per unit. The starting first shift capacity was set at 800 units. Performance and size were set at a respective 6.4 (performance) and 13.6 (size). We maintained a similar approach as displayed for Diesel regarding our investment in marketing promo and budget. Daze has remained as our main product closer to the low-tech end of the industry. The positioning for Daze relative to the perceptual map was also slightly ahead. 

Product Positioning

With the provided debrief rubric, product positioning scores started at relatively satisfactory levels for Diesel, who saw trouble in the following two rounds based on a scoring system of 0-1.5 with 0 being most desirable. Diesel’s score was brought down to a resounding 0 by the end of round five, marking maximum ideal positioning. Daze never exceeded 1.84 and reached a low of 0 in round four.

Success Measures

The Daze contribution margin was consistently exceeding expectations with a maximum of 43.7% compared to the desired 35% and never dipping below its starting rate of 26.2%. Diesel saw steady growth from 27.8% to 33.7%, staying satisfactory despite an initial loss of 4%. Additional benchmarks were stock prices, which took a hit as positioning fell to unsatisfactory levels and rose again upon product fixes.

Human Resources Findings

Our human resources plan has been consistent with gradual adjustments along the way. We began the first few years with only 20 training hours, but we increased to 60 shortly after. The employee recruitment began with $2,500 per employee while increasing to the maximum of $5,000 shortly after. Also, our company’s automation ratings began small but have increased slowly over time.

Future Projections

As we continue to move into the next two years of company development we are lowering prices to better position ourselves. In addition, we are continuing to put money into marketing and promotional budgets to better position ourselves moving forward.

BUS 499, Business Strategy and Policy
Dave Quirk

Microsoft Teams

9 – 11:30 AM

Return to schedule

Team Erie Final Presentation

Our research will showcase our findings from decision based data we’ve collected the past seven weeks. Topics addressed will not only go over how our company did from year to year, but it will also be accompanied by comparative data of other teams in the class. Our research also shows the extent of change needed throughout the weekly decisions that would positively and negatively affect our company and the changes made in efforts to make company more successful week to week. This can be seen throughout topics such as Human Resource findings, success measures, product life cycles, and product positioning where we analyze how our decisions affected the company overall.

BUS 499, Business Strategy and Policy

Dave Quirk

Microsoft Teams

9 – 11:30 AM

Return to schedule