I am listing the assignment and two examples it just needs to be rewritten.
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.