Another blog in the series to understand how to emerge as a winner in the Capsim Business Simulation. It is an online interactive platform that helps it users run a virtual business for a definite period and witness how the business works holistically and decision in any department affects all others. No person can work in silos, we have all heard it, but Capsim lets you experience the same. Capsim through its 6 departments gives the user a hands-on experience in managing the business by working on products, marketing them, managing production and finance, and improving company’s and employee’s productivity by investment in TQM and HR initiatives.
Research & Development (R&D)
R&D department in the simulation is responsible for producing and revising products based on changing customer preferences every year. This is done by revising the product based on the drift in the segments. Across all segments, every year customers are looking for enhanced performance and smaller size.
The department is entrusted to control the following four product attributes:
- The Size of the sensors
- The Performance of the sensors
- The Material Reliability through MTBF Scores
- The Age of the product
Repositioning – The Approach
In order to reposition an existing product, we start with identifying and entering the new coordinates for performance and size. Every year customers prefer smaller products with higher performance across all segments. Once you enter the new coordinates, you will see that the products are mentioned twice in the perceptual map, once in black and once in red. The black is indicative of your current position and the red is the revised position.
The farther the move from the original position, the longer will be the time that it takes to revise. More the products you have, greater will be the time needed by R&D to complete the revision.
Repositioning – The Right Way
It is the Industry Conditions Report which helps you with the movement in the perceptual map every year. The report also highlights how the ideal spots drift every year within the segment.
The idea is to prepare a schedule for ideal spots across all the segments based on the drift in the map and adjusting the drift for ideal spots as well.
For example, the perceptual map shows a coordinate of 12.0 and 7.0 for product in the high segment at round 3. The perceptual map drifts by +1 and -1.0 every year. So, the new position of the segment circle will be 13.0 and 6.0 in the next year. However, the ideal spots also drift by +1.4 and -1.4 within the segment circle.
So, my ideal spot would be 14.4 and 4.4 for round 4.
Advice
We need to adjust the movement in the segment circle and ideal spots to meet the customer preference.
It is just one of the many aspects of Capsim Business Simulation. This tool is immersive and emerging as a winner takes more than just getting the R&D right.
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