Assignment
600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions with your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.
Review the Industry Conditions Report and CapStone Courier found in the Reports section of the left hand menu in the CapSim simulation. Also, review the CapStone Team Member Guide. Based on your initial review of the CAPSIM Capstone Business Simulation, what have you have identified as the key business issues that will impact your company? Prepare to discuss this issue with the other members of your team.
Your discussion should include the following:
• Discuss the current situation in the CapSim simulation and the recent changes to the industry and competitive environment.
• What competitive challenge is faced by your company? What are the opportunities and threats (Pettus, Ch. 4)?
• Applying the business level strategies discussed in Pettus, Chapter 4, and market segment strategies discussed on page 24 of the Team Member Guide, explore possible strategic directions for your company and various sensor products. Reading and responding to the posts of your teammates is highly recommended.
Responses to Other Students: Respond to at least 2 of your fellow classmates with at least a 100-word reply about their Primary Task Response regarding important concepts to further explore. To help you with your discussion, please consider the following questions:
• What additional insights or alternative perspectives can you offer your colleague?
• What additional questions do you have after reading the posting?
• What differences or similarities do you see between your posting and other classmates' postings?
Reference
Section 1: Situation Analysis
A large monopoly has been divided into smaller companies, with equal cash flow and number of products, in market segments of traditional, low end, high end, performance, and size (CAPSIM Team Member Guide, 2014). In each team, VPs will manage their products from Research and Development, Marketing, Production, and Financial perspectives. By managing these companies, MBA candidates will understand how to run a company by making decisions, learning from failure as well as success, and working together as a team. After each round, results are posted in the Capstone Courier, a newsletter analysis of sales and performance, showing each department's position in each "year" of business.
Section 2: Competitive Challenge, Opportunities, and Threats
Though Company Andrews is at an equal place with the other Capsim companies at the outset, the other companies will be fighting for the market share with the same tenacity with which we will. To create a competitive challenge, we will need to decide where we will improve our products, how we will market them, streamline our production processes, and price them so that our customers will want to buy from us, but ensure we do not go bankrupt. Opportunities and threats are the external forces that affect a company. Opportunities are seen as "favorable conditions in the environment that could produce rewards for the organization if acted on properly" (Pettus, 2012). By researching the market and our customers' needs, we can see where our improvements will help to position us favorably. Threats consist of those market forces that could do our company harm, whether they by conditions in the market or obstacles along the way.
Section 3: Strategic Direction
Business level strategies help companies to gain and maintain market competitiveness and include criteria known as key success factors (Pettus, 2012). Our strategy will adapt over time based on the decisions we make regarding our products. The six basic business level strategies one can use for the Capsim are Broad Cost Leader, Broad Differentiator, Niche Cost Leader (Low Technology), Niche Differentiator (High Technology), Cost Leader with Product Lifecycle Focus, and Differentiator with Product Lifecycle Focus (CAPSIM Team Member Guide, 2014). The Lifecycle focus strategies may take a decade or more to manifest and would take several rounds to see any real change. Due to the nature of this class being short-term as opposed to long-term, we are unable to use the strategies with a lifecycle focus (Bowman, 2018). I think the best strategies to employ are Niche Cost Leader and Niche Differentiator. Because Team Andrews has products in all market segments, it is important to treat each one a bit differently. Low technology sensors will have very little costs within research and development (R&D), whereas high technology sensors will need to keep up with the market, especially in terms of product age. Our customers care about product age more than anything else. They will spend more money on the newer technologies. On the Perceptual Map, we wish for all our products to end on the lower right-hand side. This can mean smaller size and higher performance. Those products already starting on the lower-right will move very little, whereas those on the higher left-hand side will move the most. So combining strategies for our products will be the best over-all option for company success.
The Industry Conditions Report and CapStone Courier found to be essential informative data for imminent company. The data retrieved will allow the company to market its sensor products for competitive advantage. Based on my initial evaluation of the CAPSIM Capstone Business Simulation, found innovation, marketing, production, finance, and industry conditions, such as consumer segments that influence buying power of consumers (Capsim, 1985-2012), and (CapStone, 2018).
The Current Situation in the Capsim simulation and the recent changes to the industry.
The current situation in the CapSim simulation of firm's sensor market segment indicates their customers fall into five markets consisting of traditional, low end, high end, performance and size. These five market segments tend to overlap based on consumers perception of the product that overlaps based on perception of size and performance. This can be illustrated in round (one year) on the y-axis, size, and x-axis, performance, where lower end overlaps both performance and traditional, that drifts to the left; where traditional overlaps both size, and high end, which also overlaps in the upper left corner of the graph (CapStone, 2018 , 1). The current changes to Capsim simulation was due to position of each five segments where traditional performance grew 0.7% and size declined by 0.7%. Low end grew 0.5% where sized decreased 0.5%. High end grew 0.9% opposed to size that decreased 0.9%. Thus, performance grew 1.0% where sized decreased 1.0% (CapStone, 2018, 2). Other changes that affected the industry's simulation consists of growth rate and buying criteria (i.e. price, age, mean time before failing (MTBF), and ideal positioning). For example, buying power of traditional consumer found importance of price was 23%, age group, 47%, importance of positioning 21% (performance, 5.0; and size, 15.0), and MTBF, 9% (Capsim, 1985-2012, 4).
What competitive challenge is faced by your company? What are the opportunities and threats?
The competitive challenge the imminent firm will face is product differentiation and positioning attractive product that consumers are willing to purchase. To address these challenges is to implement focused differentiation strategy. Within the strategy, the firm must place importance of producing unique cost-efficient products attractive for each market segment (Pettus, 2012, 85).
Based on SWOT Analysis, the firm must assess its opportunities and threats opposed to their strengths and weaknesses. The imminent firm should review opportunities that can be improved. Example, the company can implement just-in-time shipping to logistic location of the consumer that will reduce distribution costs. Threats can involve obstacles preventing the company to meet its operational objectives (Pettus, 2012, 88).
Explore possible strategic directions for the company and various sensor products.
There are several strategic directions for our imminent company. First, it is imperative to have a mission statement that defines our goals and objectives for all stakeholders. Our company will implement broad-differentiations strategy, niche differentiation, with broad cost leader as well as cost leader with product focus (Capsim Management Simulations, 1985-2012, 24). The various sensor products plan to product consists of appliance sensors, such as washer and dryers, television remotes, tire O2 sensors, and mobile hydraulic sensors for electronic parts (MTS Sensors, 2006-2018).
Hence, it is essential for an imminent company to possess knowledge or its industry, innovative techniques to differentiate its products/services, marketing and sales techniques with honing on creating cash flows to develop their production and delivers services for competitive edge. Also, found reviewing internal opportunities and addressing threats can enhance the company's performance with implementing business strategies, such as broad differentiator strategy (Capsim Management Simulations, 1985-2012, 24), and (Pettus, 2012, 88). Lastly, found my initial evaluation of the CAPSIM Capstone Business Simulation, found innovation, marketing, production, finance, and industry conditions, such as consumer segments that influence buying power of consumers (Capsim, 1985-2012), and (CapStone, 2018).
Reference
CapStone (2018). Capstone Industry Conditions Report For Industry C97745.
Capsim Management Simulations, Inc (1985-2012). Capstone Team Member Guide.
MTS Sensors (2006-2018). Mobile Hydraulic Sensors.
Pettus, M. L. (2012) . Strategic Management for the Capstone Business Stimulation and Comp-SM : Analysis and Assessment.