Reflecting On MikesBikes Single-Player Essay.

After logging in you will be taken to your course page. We recommend you start by viewing the Tutorial Videos. These are very important. We also have a Quickstart Guide and a Player's Manual available for you to read.This will launch the MikesBikes Single-Player (practice) version. In the Single-Player you will compete against a computer controlled opponent, enabling you to familiarize yourself with MikesBikes.

Once you have entered your first set of decisions, you can move forward to the next year by clicking on the Rollover button (within the Rollover Menu) to process your decisions and view your results. In the Single-Player you can also Rollback to previous periods and Restore your simulation.Write a reflect journal of your business activities.

Learning and Decision-Making

It was the very first day of the project. My primary focus was on understanding the working of the game that was initiated when I was introduced to look through the market related information. I was excited to play it and so, I did not get into the basics and started to the play the game that was not the best approach as it was difficult to further proceed with. It was necessary to feed the proper information after researching in manner to make sure that the competitor loses and I win the game. The game was challenging and interesting for me as it had many correct decisions to be made if I wanted to make my company profitable moreover, the decision-making should be related to the market research without any assumptions or random data. The goal was to gain higher Stakeholder value SHV as compared to the competitor.

I learnt how to manipulate our decisions considering the market results related to the factors such as production, demands, advertisement, public relations and others. I find out that the price can be minimized and production can be increased and so, I decreased the retail price to 650$ and increased the sales forecast units to 25,000. That resulted in low availability of the units to sale. And thus, I increased the production to 25,000 units in the ‘production planner’. This helped me in increasing the stakeholder value after analysing the market information.

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This was the time when, I could use the gained knowledge for playing the game and practicing it. So, I get through the videos and manuals of the courses and started playing game. For the first attempt, I tried to manipulate many variables that resulted in the bad decisions as, I selected some values of the PR and advertising zero (as TV and internet forecasting were not good). Later on, I found that the all the variables of the PR and advertisement are crucial and I should invest minimum amount to make it happen. Thus, I managed to get positive result and my forecasting resulted more than the competitor. The following resultshe market summary report found after the simulation was as is:

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I tried to look into different decisions and targeted to improve them for better results as the following:

Distribution

There are three outlets who takes the margin of the sales of the bikes however, looking at the distribution report, the most users shop the bikes from sports stores and less from bike shop and discount stores. So, I manipulated the distribution and decreased the margin of bike shops and discount stores by 3 % and increased the sports stores’ margin by 2% with and additional support of $ 50,000 to both the bike shops and discount stores. Again the forecast results were effective and we made good decisions and forecast resulted in the positive gain as follows:

In addition to the class lecture notes and videos, I was also looking YouTube for learning videos and also get some tutorials there too. The concepts and clarifications were approximately same however, lecture classes were more informative than the YouTube tutorials. I look forwards towards manipulating the advertising/Public relations and so, I started with the retail price. I already completed it before, the existing figures were $ 650 and sales forecast units were 25,000. I looked into the marketing reports and.

Manipulating Distribution and Advertising

I found that more consumers are likely to be aware through magazines and so, I increased the budget of the magazine investment and decreased the investments for the TV and internet. This resulted in the positive way as we saw, we made better profits than the competitors. The previous results were the after effect of the above manipulations that allowed me in rollover the new results as provided above. Again, the second results were positive and I was happy with the progress, I was making. I was excited to forecast next year results but, I preferred to make next achievement later.

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This was time when I could look for the next decisions including capacity/efficiency, Quality, and debt. I performed following decisions:

The third years’ production planner tab shows the overall forecast as:This states that each of our mountain bikes requires .5 of a standard capacity unit to make. Now, again I moved to the capacity planner, where I found the following results:

I identified that our factory has the capacity of producing 20,000 SCU however, we currently need only need 10,000 SCU for our mountain bike and so, we don’t need to buy new SCUs and so, we don’t need to buy SCU for this year. Now moving to efficiency tab, I found:

I found that we are facing wastage of 4,166 SCU and so, we need to increase the efficiency by decreasing these wastes. I increased the expenditure by 400,000 that helped in limiting the efficiency index to 80.4 and thus the Wastage also limited to 3,050.

Quality:

This was the time, when I can focus on the quality of the firms’ product. Looking at the market information, I get minimum sensitivity to the quality however, looking into competition, I invested on the quality expenditure of $ 200,000 that resulted in quality index to be 75.6:

Thereafter I move to financial management menu considering the debts manipulation. I had to keep the balanced debt or manage it low as, increasing debt will impact the SHV of the firm. I analysed the Pro forma cashflow report for necessary idea to make the decision:

I found, we have enough ending cash balance to pay the debt and hence, I paid all the debts. Thereafter, I forecast the overall results that was found to be profitable:Thereafter, I rollover the decisions and the following results were found:

That was not very impressive as I was dragged back by the competitor and so I rollback once again to improvise my decisions. I checked that the overall revenue of my organization was not good as compared to the competitor and hence, I went to the distribution and banding. I looked into it and made following changes:

I increased the retail price as per the suggestion figure: 700 and increased the sales forecast a little to 27,00, moreover I manipulated the advertising and public relations through investing little bit more on the magazine and less on others as the forecast stated that magazines will be of worth50% value and 30 and 40 % for respective others. Again, the results were not very promising and so, I decided to start from the second year and rollback the simulation twice where, I saw in the product summary that we produced the product more than the demand. And hence, this time I restricted the production exact to the demand as that in the last year considering the consistency in the demand. Finally after the modifications, I get the following results that was enough to move ahead:

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This time was for further analysing the new product, development and dividend and that I delivered in the following ways:

New Product: Considering the cost variations, I decided to modify the product considering cuts in the cost and quality enhancement that will cost 2 million. However, cost reduction will no doubt, save about 25% of the other quality enhancement investments even after investing this money. I notices that Considering the market segments and after analysing the entire reports, I identified that launching youth bike can be much more profitable for the company. The estimated market segment predicts $375 for the new product in the market and considering this, I kept the retail price for the product: $380 as it will be a new product to launch.

Considering the market information, I decided to invest $ 1m on TV, and 25% of these on other advertising media. Furthermore, since it was a new product, I has to start from the production planning and capacity planning where I kept the production to be 21,000 units. Considering the shares of the different channels and the market summary report, the discount stores are the likely ones, where new product launch can be much more productive and hence, the margin percentage is increased by 1% with an additional support of $20,000. Then, I moved to the equity tab where I selected the repurchase of worth amount $500,000. Thereafter, I rollover the simulation for the final results that predicted the following results:

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Thereafter, once again I used my skills to complete the next simulation that also resulted in positive manner and I am now ready to look forward towards playing this entertaining game and improving my skills in this sector.

Action points to improve future group performance

1. SHV is significantly impacted by financial management and thus, they should be taken after analysing the reports thoroughly.
2. The decisions should be made considering the overall improvement of the product quality and cost.
3. The information is very critical for proper and exact decision-making