Ashley Alldridge, Mary Grace Blaser, Gage Garcia & Ikani Naulu

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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Hannah Bucher, Makenna Hadaller, Jennifer Herrera & Orin Johnson

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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Ethan Crofts, Brandon Mills & Kelsie Helleweg

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

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Gunnar Lassen, Caroline Meili & Logan Oakerman

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

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Ethan Pentony, Rachel Rhoads, Brevin Russnogle & Nico Wolff

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

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Danielle Baker, Canyon Dwyre, Madeleine Rosebrook & Nicolas Schapochnik

BUS 499 Capstone Presentation: Baldwin Company

In this capstone presentation, my teammates and I will discuss and analyze what we have learned while operating our virtual censor manufacturing company this semester. First, we will present our company mission statement and clearly define our business strategy. We will follow this with an explanation of the different products we created, their life cycles, positions in the market, and how this contributed to an increase or decrease in our success measures. After this, we will discuss our success measures, why we chose them, and how we did or did not achieve them. Finally, we will clearly project measurable results for our final round of competition. We will end our presentation with a short discussion on the experience we gained while running our own company and answer any questions the audience might have.

BUS 499, Business Strategy and Policy

Dave Quirk

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Liam Bedford, Shanay Dotson, Jose Magana & Ana Paradones

Chester Inc.

In this presentation we will be discussing Chester Inc. performance in the Capsim simulation. We will discuss how we set up products, how we marketed products, organized the production of our products and managed the sales and finances of the company.

BUS 499, Business Strategy and Policy

Dave Quirk

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Arthur Breidenbach, Logan Davis, Blake Doran, Zachary Drach & Luis Diaz Menendaz

Capstone Final Presentation Team Digby

For our presentation we will explain the mission statement and strategy we chose to use and why we chose them for our organization/simulation. We will also discuss our three products and how they fit into our strategy, their product life, and whether they were a successful product or not. We will also discuss the troubling times we went through and how we are going to reinvent our business to be more successful. In addition, we will cover the struggles we encountered in our business. For several weeks, unfortunately, we took out several emergency loans in order to stay open. Finally, we will discuss the measures we took in order to turn Digby into a profitable firm.  

BUS 499, Business Strategy and Policy

Dave Quirk

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Shawn Carson, Andres Martinez, Jane Taimalie & Alexis Westbrooks

Andrews Company

Our presentation will include all of our company’s decisions week by week illustrating the main highlights. At Andrews Company we sell radars with the goal of providing the public consumer with multiple options. We will be selling radars in the high tech, low tech, and in between categories in order to help our consumers find their preferred radar. Week 1 highlighs our all-out investment of our company and its products. You will see that in the following weeks we get ambitious by continuing our creation of a new product for the company. To keep up with our business strategy, we try our best to provide the best prices for consumers while still continuing to make a profit. We have found that through our low prices, we are able to draw in consumers from all over, providing our company with the upmost success.

BUS 499, Business Strategy and Policy

Dave Quirk

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Courtney Alldridge, Jenna Christenson & Josh Goins

Business Capstone
Cost Leader with Product Lifecycle Focus. Our extraordinary products are tailored for technology-oriented customers. We provide world-class products backed by fanatical support, delivering an exceptional experience. We also drive great returns for our stakeholders, which include our customers, stockholders, management and employees.
BUS 499, Business Strategy & Policy
Dave Quirk
L204
10 AM – Noon
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Michael Andrews, Joshua Chesnut, Olisaemeka Obianozie & Jacob Pitts

Baldwin Branch
Baldwin is committed to improving the quality of life and human capabilities of society through fostering innovation and conducting rigorous research.
BUS 499, Business Strategy & Policy
Dave Quirk
L204
10 AM – Noon
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Antonio Campos-Perez, Tyler Farmer, Harley Gilpin & Austin Tyner

Andrews Tech. Company
Andrews is a multimillion dollar company. We manufacture sensors, which we market to other manufacturers. They put out products into the devices they sell. Out company was created when the government split a monopoly into identical competitors. Sensors are devices that observe physical conditions. For example, the average cell phone contains dozens of sensors that allow it to interpret touch, spatial orientation, and signal strength. New sensor businesses are created every day in areas as diverse as security, aeronautics and biomedical engineering.
BUS 499, Business Strategy & Policy
Dave Quirk
L204
10 AM – Noon
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Tomás Carradero, Jessica Garner, Ben Olive & Lauren Oliver

Capsim Team Digby
Our mission is to provide a Broad Cost Leader strategy that keeps a strong presence in both high- and low-tech segments. We will strive to keep a competitive advantage over our competition by providing superior products. We attempt to keep our costs at a minimum based on the market. Our ability to keep products in both high- and low-tech will allow us to stay relevant in both segments. Higher-priced products for the industry offer solid value. Our stakeholders are bondholders, customers, stockholders and management. Our automation levels will be high, to keep productions costs low. After we establish our cost leadership position, we will reevaluate our strategy as a whole.
BUS 499, Business Strategy & Policy
Dave Quirk
L204
10 AM – Noon
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