Running Head: Final Report Capsim- Andrews Company
Capsim Simulation Final Report
Student Name
College Affiliation
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Final Report- Andrews Company
Table of Contents
PART A: Executive summary....................................................................................................................... 2
1.0: Progress of Andrews .......................................................................................................................... 2
2.0: Current situation: SWOT analysis ..................................................................................................... 3
2.1: Strengths ........................................................................................................................................ 3
2.2: Weaknesses .................................................................................................................................... 4
2.3: Opportunities ................................................................................................................................. 4
2.4: Threats ........................................................................................................................................... 5
3.0: Future of the company ....................................................................................................................... 5
3.0: Ethical, social and legal challenges ................................................................................................... 7
4.0: Global considerations ........................................................................................................................ 7
PART B: Professional reflection................................................................................................................... 8
1.0: Overall experience ............................................................................................................................. 8
2.0: Experience when performing the simulation ..................................................................................... 8
3.0: Application of what have learnt ......................................................................................................... 9
4.0: How I demonstrated effective business communication.................................................................... 9
5.0: Establishing and maintaining professional business etiquette ......................................................... 10
6.0: References........................................................................................................................................ 10
PART C: APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................ 11
Appendix A ............................................................................................................................................. 11
Appendix B ............................................................................................................................................. 11
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Final Report- Andrews Company
PART A: Executive summary
1.0: Progress of Andrews
Andrews Company had several strategies implemented during the fiscal year that just
ended. In the initial strategy, the company’s main aim was to maintain its presence in both
segments by utilizing broad differentiation strategy. The strategy saw our prices align in the first
three competitive rounds with the average prices of the market in each segment while keeping
the costs low. In fact, it was our objective to maintain presence and grab market leadership in the
low end and traditional segments of the sensor product business. We actualized our objective
because we allocated significant resources to the marketing, R&D and the promo sectors. In
particular, our differentiator was the result of high investments in our research and development
that ensured our products were available throughout the year.
Our management team decided to measure the progress of Andrews by the ROA and net
profits. In this regard, our strategy shifted to that aiming at focusing primary on the high end
segment while maintaining product ABLES’s presence in the traditional segment. New products
were positioned in the high market segment (Tang, P., 2013). For example, when product
A_Bake came out of R&D, it was on the high end as indicated by the perceptual map in the
Appendix A.
In the mid-year analysis, the board introduced new products- A_Bake and A_Dell sensors
so that Andrews Company can maintain its presence in the high market. We strongly believed
that if we maintained a strong presence in the traditional and high end categories we would
achieve our objectives. As the simulation advanced, we moved our products from the size and
performance segments to low end to ensure we doubled our presence within these categories. We
were hopeful that the products would be cheaper to maintain as far as R&D was concerned. In
order to accurately forecast our product placement, we created our spreadsheet that had forecasts
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Final Report- Andrews Company
through the entire period of six years. This enabled us to see where our product is currently and
where it would be in the near future.
When it comes to product pricing, we always strived to keep our prices low in the
industry. In the second round and third round, we lowered our prices by $9.00 before introducing
a new product. We did this to attract the customers and make them close so that after introducing
a new product, A_Bake, its awareness can be high (St Clair, N. C., 2015). In later rounds, we
strayed from the low pricing strategy and increased the price for ABLE to $37.00 to turn profits
when other products were lowly priced. Looking back, we can generally say that while a
business strategies are important to adhere to, having a profitable business is the ultimate goal.
2.0: Current situation: SWOT analysis
2.1: Strengths
In Andrew’s SWOT analysis, the following strengths are highlighted;
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Our company had an ideal positioning of products in both segments of the market. At
Andrews Corporation, we aim to deliver sensors to our customers in respect to their
varied needs. We have a string understanding that each segment has their own needs and
therefore different criteria should be used when assessing our products.
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Higher product accessibility or distribution and customer awareness. We had allocated
enough resources for the promotional budget because at this Company we focus at
product distribution to customers. We also aim to improve accessibility every year to
reach out to every potential customer.
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Highly knowledgeable and well trained employees. We strive for production of quality
products. It is therefore important to have skilled staff in the manufacturing, selling and
distribution of our three products. We allocated resources to out HR for training our staff.
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Final Report- Andrews Company
This is our major strength because it enables us to have a lower turnover rate while
keeping our staff satisfied by the reduced overtime.
2.2: Weaknesses
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R&D utilization was low and needs improvements. In the R&D department, major
improvement will help us in the future to meet the consumer demand and achieve the
desired efficiency.
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Production for Andrews failed to meet the demand in the market. Market demand is one
of the things our company is assessed of and our anticipation on production capacity is
low in meeting the market demand. We aim at carefully forecasting the market capacity
so that we can successfully meet the market demand throughout the cycle of our
products.
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Low automation for product ABLE. Developing the capabilities of our automation will
be an important thing in keeping the costs low in the human resources as well as in
streamlining the process of production (St Clair, N. C., 2015).
2.3: Opportunities
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We have an opportunity to increase presence in the current segments. Currently, our
products have presence in the low market and high market. However, the presence in the
low market is greater than that in the high market. Increasing presence in the high market
will boost in creating a stronger customer survey.
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Expanding into other market segments. Andrews has a great potential of expanding into
new market segments and open new bases to customers for our products. New customer
segments include traditional, high tech, size and performance.
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Final Report- Andrews Company
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Innovation of new products. This opportunity involves creating new products that the
company anticipates the market needs. Being among the first company in the industry to
create a newer product, more innovatively created products have a stronger appeal to the
customers. In addition, investing in the current products will make them more appealing
to customers.
2.4: Threats
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Low awareness of our competitors in the industry. It is imperative to watch our
competitors closely so that we can come up with accurate market projection. Lack of
awareness for other firms and what they are doing is a quick way to failure in capturing
the major share of the market.
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Being out-positioned underpriced and outsold by other companies in the industry. We
should be able to capture our potential market share in the segment we are in by
efficiently evaluating our positioning and determining a suitable pricing mechanism. To
do these processes inefficiently will put our company into a disaster and kill our ability to
reinvest.
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Little presence in the current segments. The only sure way to maintain our presence is by
conducting an effective campaign in the market and then proactive accessibility. It should
be noted that a product that is perfectly positioned cannot outsell that product which has a
stronger presence. Presence is therefore an important element to grant a company an
opportunity to grow without any major financial hindrance.
3.0: Future of the company
In the early stages, our company made a couple of mistake which it appeared to be
recovering from after key corrections were implemented in the last few rounds. In the analysis of
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Final Report- Andrews Company
the company’s capabilities, we believe that the company would be well positioned in the years to
come. This is because we were taking major steps towards improving our debt situation to keep
us on track and become more profitable in a year or two from now(Tang, P., 2013). To support
this, our market share in both the low and traditional segments had begun to increase. Despite
being at the position we were in our competition, we hope that with better communication
between us and other executives, we would be able to get the company on its toes and perform
better in its returns and profitability.
Changes that we were to make over the next few years
Some of the major changes that we were to make so that we meet our strategic plans
includes elements like automation and capacity, market segments, products, finance and
marketing. Our company is heavily focusing on the ways to have more significant presence in
the high tech segment and all of our products are fairly positioned in all the segments. We would
continue to make necessary changes to keep up with the required drifts of the perceptual map.
Due to our efforts to maintain low costs, our automation and capacity levels are below optimal
on a basis of aiming forward. Over the next two or three years, we would need to reinvest some
of the company’s profits back into an operation of raising the levels of automation and
production capacity in order to keep the costs low in long term.
Despite our desires to improve our profitability, marketing expenses are not expected to
be altered much. We can still continue maximizing on our low end segments without having to
spend much on size, performance and high end tech segments.
In finance, the team would focus on strategies to avoid emergency loans and retire debt as we
have been struggling throughout the period.
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Final Report- Andrews Company
3.0: Ethical, social and legal challenges
In the entire Capsim simulation, our company learnt to exercise social, cultural and legal
ethics by the use of the provided plugins. We also recognized the ethical dilemmas in our
company and industry at large. Some of the major area we exercised business ethics include
financial, legal and social sectors.
For instance, in financial sector, we practiced ethical reasoning by making sound
decisions. We avoided emergence loans which would burden the company at the beginning of
every fiscal year. We ensured every member of the team understood the use of ethical tools for
decision-making in our Foundation track dashboard. The knowledge of these tools is important
in all disciplines of financing, marketing and operations (St Clair, N. C., 2015).
4.0: Global considerations
Andrew’s Vision is to become a global leader in all segments of the market. However, with
the decisions made over the last financial year, it is evident that some sectors of the company
need to be reinvested in so as to achieve that mission. Some of the major recommendations
include, but not limited to;
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Investing more in the TQM sector. For any company to expand into new markets
globally, quality is imperative. Investing more in total quality management can help in
boosting the company’s performance and hit the global market more conveniently.
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We are also striving at elevating our brand as a company and increasing revenues by
constantly delivering value to stakeholders like customers, bond holders and
management. A strategic plan to achieve global leadership in the sensor market need to
be established for the R&D, financing, HR and marketing as well.
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Final Report- Andrews Company
PART B: Professional reflection
1.0: Overall experience
In general, my experience on Capsim Simulation has been exciting and provided skills
and opportunities to see the effect of business strategic decisions of a multi-million dollar
company. I learnt on what worked well and what did not work in a real business company. I have
also learnt some lessons. One of the biggest lessons learnt from Foundation Track simulation
was that for a company to be successful, we cannot solely aim at making high sales, but
sometimes we have to remain low as a company. Keeping our marketing, production and
financing cost low will help in making sales that in turn bring profits. However, some areas have
been challenging.
One of the biggest challenges which plagued our group was a continued loss of revenue
which saw us end each year with a negative. Although we performed well in the low segment in
several occasions, we did not meet the levels of profits anticipated.
Another great lesson is that work closely as a team and maintaining good communication with a
sole strategy will attract success. Making adjustment and re-adjusting them while discussing is
not a good approach (St Clair, N. C., 2015).
2.0: Experience when performing the simulation
Critical issues in faced during the simulation
During our simulation rounds, we came across several setbacks but the major one was the
continued revenue loss. We attempted to make necessary decisions that we could but still could
not manage out of the red throughout the whole competition. We made changes to all the
sections including finance, production, HR and marketing. However, the way remained
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Final Report- Andrews Company
competitive gave me and my team motivation despite the fact that initially or size, high segment
and even performance did not fare well during the initial stages in the market. After adjusting our
prices accordingly, we were able to maintain competitiveness in the industry in the segments.
3.0: Application of what have learnt
In all the lessons learnt and experience gained from the simulation, selection of some lessons
can be applied in a real business company as explained below;
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Our team found that we lacked funds to free up some of the required resources so that we
can achieve our objectives. So we learned that setting the objectives right can be difficult
but very important. This lesson can be applied in big companies within any industry by
setting objectives so that the employees maintain focus on the set strategy.
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Companies need to focus on their mission and vision. Lessons learnt can help individuals
to formulate business vision and missions for various companies.
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The simulation provided essential skills needed to run and maintain any firm. The
strength of our company can be strongly related to our team work and ability to
communicate effectively. The skill gained from this practice can be placed in a real
business setting or under strict deadlines.
4.0: How I demonstrated effective business communication
Demonstrating good business communication skills kept us proactive and hence stayed
ahead of the curve. I ensured that I worked closely with the members of the team with a sole
strategy. Other members also avoided unnecessary adjustments and re-adjustments while
discussing them over.
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Final Report- Andrews Company
5.0: Establishing and maintaining professional business etiquette
`
Establishing and maintaining professional business etiquette can be complex and
remarkably involving. In our Company, we tried to find a balance between creativity,
productivity and enjoyment of the simulation setting. Every member focused on creating a
positive environment so that the productivity and profitability of the company can be maintained.
Some of the mechanisms used to establish professional business etiquette are discussed as
follows;
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Striving to create a long-term culture; Workplace culture that last should exist to present
a positive public outlook. Throughout the simulation, we made decisions that promoted
the welfare of the workers and our customers as well.
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Aligning the leadership; Andrews Company noted that positive culture at the workplace
solely relies on responsible leaders who can collaborate towards the company’s mission.
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Encouraging teamwork and involvement; focusing on teamwork and collective decision
making can give any company’s team a sense of purpose. All members feel valued and
the can perpetuate it better.
6.0: References
Tang, P. (2013). Assessing decision making strategies in construction management by using a
schedule-based simulation framework.
St Clair, N. C., & Girard, J. P. (2015). DO ONLINE AND FACE-TO-FACE STUDENTS
EXHIBIT THE SAME INFORMATION ANALYSIS SKILLS?.Issues in Information
Systems, 16(2).
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Final Report- Andrews Company
PART C: APPENDICES
Appendix A
Summary of the Company performance in the year that just ended;
Appendix B
List of figures
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Final Report- Andrews Company
Figure 1: Summary of products in low end segment
Figure 2: summary of production analysis
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Final Report- Andrews Company
Figure 3: Report on market share