Week Three Journal This week’s key learning areas have been eye opening and worthwhile. Our game simulation has taught me how to manage the human resources (HR), capacity planning, receiving, production, and shipping departments. One key element that caught my attention was bottleneck issues. Although reputation and meeting goals is important, I must pay attention to the machines that are causing bottleneck issues; performing a cost/benefit analysis can fulfill this. It is necessary to manage mistakes made in strategy during the game, which can resolve issues down the road to have a successful business plan. There were three questions posed in our case study: What are the highest three unit profits?; What are the lowest percentage mark-up items?; and How would you use this in determining your business plan? These key areas will be discussed throughout the journal to express my understanding of the experience. Discussion Management of several …show more content…
I took to heart the alternative means of identifying bottlenecks to examine the utilization of equipment. When evaluating these areas I noticed that the sewing machine had the highest utilization, which meant an upgrade needed to take place. Not forgetting that packaging would become an issue too, so taking note of this allowed me to get contracts fulfilled. The mistakes I made were obvious at the beginning, such as not hiring enough of employees, not paying attention to the bottleneck issues, and bidding on contracts before fulfilling the five contracts that were already produced. This caused my reputation and profit to plummet. Finally, remembering not to take contracts without checking if all necessary machines are available is crucial. This week’s simulation has opened my eyes to many details that will be valuable in my business
McGraw-Hill Education has designed a series of learning games specifically targeting students to improve their experience in a virtual like work scenario. One of them namely Practice Operations would be discussed in this essay. Practice is a sequences of games which are planned to incorporate immersive learning encounters and rich evaluation capacities. In this practice operations simulation, there are 6 modules. To begin with, first module namely The Production Process, I have learned how to prioritise decisions based on the client requirements. I aced how to organize the production tasks as per the client’s necessities, how to manufacture and ship products based on the deadline and also by maintaining the maximum production percentage in the production process. The Second module which is called managing suppliers includes ordering for raw materials like for instance cotton, denim and silk. It helped me understand how to optimize our order based on the factors like quality and lead time. The third module is known as forecasting and contracts, which showed the significance of the understanding the idea of forecasting the demand of the up-coming seasons. This module entirely was based on the procurement process. In this module, you will decide on which contracts to pursue, and enhance their receiving, production, and shipment departments likewise. Therefore,
The purpose of this paper is assessing my strategy and decisions in the simulation Biz Café. Then, I will give my results and explain how I got there. However, there were many factors involved creating these results. In this simulation, everything was left up to me to decide how to run my new coffee shop. There were big decisions at the beginning you had to make to create the overall theme of your business. Then, I was to hire employees, buy goods, and act on specials decisions or react to good or bad customer reactions. This, I will explain more in the following paragraphs.
Our team operated and managed the Littlefield Technologies facility over the span of 1268 simulated days. Our team finished the simulation in 3rd place, posting $2,234,639 in cash at the end of the game. We did intuitive analysis initially and came up the strategy at the beginning of the game. And then we applied the knowledge we learned in the class, did process analysis and modified our strategies according to the performance results dynamically. We have reinforced many of the concepts and lessons learned in class and had a better understanding of the operation of the Littlefield Technologies facility and how certain modifications would affect the throughput and lead time.
This paper will cover a reflection of my experience with the Biz Café simulation. After reading this paper, one should have an idea of what I learned from the simulation and how it works. I will be talking about the challenges my team and I dealt with and how we overcame these challenges. Most importantly, I will be talking about how we made Coffee Connection run as a successful coffee shop. In this paper, I will also discuss my thoughts on teamwork and the significant factors of running a small business.
A portfolio is an organized, purposeful compilation of evidence documenting a child’s development and learning over time (McAfee, Leong, & Bodrova, 2016, p. 98). I thin k that implementing the Portfolio Plan would definitely contribute to the knowledge that I have already learned from my observation of Camden. After interviewing her mother and observing her, she seems to already be on a good path in her development and learning. I believe that some of the things that I have planned out on the Portfolio Plan would be very beneficial for her.
1. According to the author, what is wrong with the process of giving public funds to private groups to provide Education in New Orleans?
The table 8 demonstrated how was the delivery of service by AFRICEL-TEMPO to his customers which came out with a conclusion that 36.5% of customers preferred the delivery of services as fairly good, the rest 32.6% of the respondents said that the delivery of service was good, 13.5% of the respondents said that the delivery of service by AFRICEL-TEMPO was excellent, 13.9% of respondents said that it was fair and 3.5% of the respondents said that it was poor.
Since quarter one was the first quarter of this simulation, I was unaware of how difficult it was going to be to make all the different decisions. Firstly, I had to choose a Company name. Because I was selling computers, I thought that the name “Dev-Tech” was a perfect fit being that this simulation was about development and technology. Next, I had to choose a target segment. I knew going into this simulation that it would be better to invest in the more expensive goods as it would benefit me in the end. The segment that didn’t care about price was Mercedes, so that is the segment that I made my first priority.
Team 2 has researched and completed a comparative analysis of Mattel’s supply chain design and related costs with that of its major competitor Hasbro and the toy industry. What follows, is a brief background of Mattel’s traditional (non-electronic game) sector, its key competitors and Mattel’s use of supply chain management concepts in addressing the competitive landscape to gain a competitive advantage. The global toy and game market grew by 7.2% in 2007 with a value of $106.1 billion and by 2012, is forecasted to have a value of $126.2 billion, an increase of 18.9% over 2007. The toy market is divided into three primary sectors, namely game consoles, game software and traditional toys and games. Traditional toys and
Along with capacity, we also made it a focus to limit the amount of overtime and second shift workers. This kept our costs down and our profit margin wider. We paid attention to our inventory on hand and made sure to not schedule more production than was needed. Towards the later rounds, we really seemed to grasp the idea of the game, which can be seen in our large increase in profitability. In the Finance portion, we borrowed money in the first five weeks to pay off our current debt. As the game got into the later rounds we began paying off our current and long term debt because our profits were increasing at a higher rate. Overall, we believe that our group had a decent understanding of the concepts as we finished with high market share and profits.
The strategy I chose for the simulation is “Niche Cost Leader." First, with the key focus being value, this strategy will challenge me to keep costs at a minimum and force me to streamline overall costs to produce a valuable commodity that, in turn, will generate financial success that can be shared with internal and external stakeholders. Second, as the success of this strategy primarily relies on the existing product line being prosperous, I will be able to practice and hone my forecasting skills based on one product. Though I eventually will produce more than one product, most of the simulation will be conducting under making the primary product as successful as it can be, and reliable forecasts are
Initially, our firm’s business position was at a healthy position. In the beginning of the simulation, our overall market share for the automobile industry was 28.2%; the highest in the market. We realized that our primary strength from product contribution came from our economy car Alec with 63.5% market share for economy cars, and from our utility car, awesome with a 48.5% market share for its vehicle class. Thus, it was evident what we needed to do; maintain high market share of our leading cars while conforming our least profitable vehicle class sustainably to coordinate to customer demand.
SCM Globe is a supply chain game designed to teach concepts in supply chain design, demand forecasting, resource allocation, and production planning by the use of illustrating how different supply chain designs produce different operating results and explore how to manage those results. The game is performed in a real-time setting that allows for helping to create a supply chain that meet customer demands for products with the lowest operating costs and lowest inventory levels. The simulation gives students an opportunity to design and manage the supply chain of stores that sell Crunch Candy and Just Born Candy. During the simulation experience, students create products, facilities, vehicles and routes while
As I get further and further along in this simulation, I have noticed that I am beginning to understand what it takes as a marketing manager in order to be successful. Careful considerations must be made to be sure that the right decisions benefit both Minnesota Micromotors, Inc., and our customers. Our success comes from our customers’ success and loyalty that they have with this company. In finding ways to incorporate the important factors that matter most to our customers is what will bring in new customers and keep our existing ones around for the long hall.
This assignment evaluates the performance of team Baldwin around the success in managing the company over five rounds of the simulation. The assessment will be focused on the round analysis areas with key attention on inventory, profit and contribution margin, emergency loans, and stock price. In addition, the assignment reflects on the areas of improvement and how the team could have developed effectiveness in addressing these key areas in round analysis.