How to Pwn Capstone Simulation (CapSim)

UPDATE #2: In-Depth Guide to CapSim (LINK)


EDIT: Wow, since I get so many views on this, I think I'll create a more in-depth guide to help those seeking for help. ^_^ I'll surely post it up before September comes around to get you guys ready for the new start of the school year (I'm sure some companies utilize this simulation to teach managers and personnel too).

So it's my senior year and I'm required to take this class called Business Strategy & Policy. We have to pay like 100 bucks to do this simulation online where you own your own company. For this company, you have to make strategic planning. You need to decide how much you want to spend on Research & Development, how you're going to market your products, how much you're going to pay your employees, do you want to take out loan or retire existing loan or issue/buy back stocks?, and a lot of other decision. Best of all, you're competing other people and not just the computer. My group started off not reading anything on it, so we were clueless on what to do. It is Year 6 and we're in last place with $148million of total debt. But after putting serious effort into this simulation, I finally found out how to win it.

Tip:
1. NEVER CREATE A NEW PRODUCT. Waste of money. You need to put a lot of money into a new product by R&D, promotion and sales, etc.
2. DO NOT TAKE OUT SHORT TERM LOAN UNLESS YOU HAVE TO. This simulation is serious business. 14% interest rate? You'll be paying huge amount of interest.
3. I forgot...

But there's the gist of it.

Research & Development:
Your product should always meet what the customers want.
If you go to Reports --> Industry Conditions Report and scroll down a little bit, it should give you a chart of what they want each year.
With the exception of Low-End segment. They don't really care about performance and size. They care a lot about price and age. You can leave the Low-End segment product with 3/17 until Round 5/6. As long as it's an old product and you sell it cheap enough to cover your cost, you should lead the market with that.
There's not much to say here. Make sure you follow the Perceptual Map on setting your performance and size (Traditional, High End, Performance, and Size) because it is what the customers want. The default MTBF is at a good number for all of the product. The only thing I recommend changing is the Low-End to make the material cost cheaper, but not really necessary.

Marketing(!):
This is really important. Here are some really useful tips:
1. Prices should never be too high or too low. For Low-End segment, make sure you can cover all the cost and not selling at a lost. For High-End, people might attempt to price it at a very high price because only 9% of the market cares about price. Hell, you can price it above the range and you will still do well as long as the perform/size is what they want. Also, remember that the customers wants the price to be $0.50 cheaper every year, but price it at a reasonable price to beat your competitors. Good prices to start out with: T$28/L$20/H$39/P$32/S$32
2. Round 0 and 1, you cannot allocate your money into different promotions and sales. Start by investing 2000 into every promotion and 3000 into every sales budget. THIS IS REALLY CRITICAL. Awareness and Accessibility is REALLY IMPORTANT to make your products sell really well! Aim for 95%+ in Awareness/Accessibility. Once you start off well, you'll take all the market shares. Once it's around 95%+, you should be in Round 3 where you can start allocating money into different promotions and sales. !ALSO REMEMBER, AWARENESS AND ACCESSIBILITY ACCUMULATES EVERY YEAR! You won't have a high one for spending a lot in one year and drop it down by spending really low another year. They lose 15% each year, so you have to set a budget to keep it high once you max it.
-For Promotion, look at the tips and allocate your fund into where it's the best way to promote. Make sure you spent at least $1,500 in each segment to keep it high. Each year, it goes down 15% if you don't put money into promotion.
-For Sales Budget, 12/30/15 is max (I believe $4,500 per segment). If it's at 95% awareness, you can lower it to about $2,000 total per segment.
3. If your company is doing well, always predict that you will sell 200~500+ more product than the previous year. Don't look at the computer prediction because it's not accurate. It's predicting how much you'll sell if you don't have any good competitions.

Production:
This page is really important to understand too.
1. Production Schedule = Unit Sales Forecast - Inventory On Hand. You can produce less than that. If you produce more than that, you will get a charging fee based on how much more you produce.
2. Buy/Sell capacity: Capacity is how much you can produce. Capacity should be half of what you think you need to produce. So after subtracting your Inventory On Hand, the Production Schedule is how much you're going to produce for that year. If you're producing 1000 product that year, your 1st Shift Capacity should be 550~600 (for producing 1100~1200 products) but no more than that unless you think you will produce a lot more next year. Remember, buying capacity cost more than what you get back from selling. Don't sell too much of it. Tradition and Low-End should have a fairly high capacity while High/Perf/Size should have a low capacity.
3. Automation basically mean using machines to produce products. By using machines, you cut down on labor cost (At automation 10, your labor cost should be at $1.57). Sounds awesome! But that's not the end of it. Every year, you're improving your products in R&D. By upgrading your products, you also have to upgrade your machines to produce these new products. This will delay the products and you won't be able to push out the new products until really late into the year or even next year. So you want high automation on products that don't improve a lot or improve very minimal each year. You want low automation for products that requires big change and change every year. Here are some good automations: T6~7, L10, H3, P5, S5.

Human Resource:
Not much here... Make sure your labor negotiation meets what the employees want.
Max out the spending here if you have the money. Or else, just keep it in the average. I didn't see much significant here. ~$1000 to $2000 in Recruiting Spending each year and 40~60 Training Hours.

Finance:
NEVER! EVER! TAKE OUT SHORT TERM LOANS UNLESS YOU HAVE TO! That means your company is doing really bad and you're expecting that if you don't, you'll have to take out an emergency loan which has a higher interest. If you are not playing in the Price per Share, then take out max long term debt for the first 2~3 years. It will help you a lot in the long term to have a good head start on promotion, sales and R&D.
Shares, it was not really important to us. Issue shares when you have a high Price Per Share and Buy back if you have a bad Price Per Share (for my group, our Price Per Share has been $1.00 for the past 3 Rounds).

TQM:
Starts in Round 3. Play with your numbers and see how much you can invest in each category until it doesn't make that big of a difference. I found it was good to invest $1,600 in each of them the first year. Any year after that, just put $1 in each TQM Initiatives and $1,000 in Concurrent Engineering. It won't make a big difference even if you spend $1,000 in each of them. It's good to lower all your cost at the first year that you can start investing into TQM.

Make sure your income statement do not have any red numbers. If you can, keep your predicted Net Profit at 10% each year. Don't take out too much debt or else the investors will not let you take out anymore money and you won't be able to invest any money into capacity/automation. Make sure you don't give minimum wage or else your employees might strike or leave your company for the others.

I did this with the Rehearsal simulation and I ended up with 55% of the market share by the end of Round 4. Good luck! :)

Stress

Why won't you leave me alone? :(

Life Updates

Life's been pretty down knowing all the public accounting firms that I've applied to declined me. Everywhere I go, I hear people talking about all the firms that they've been accepted to and it is hard to choose. I just cover my ears and continue walking. But today was a good day. :)

Today marks the first day to snow this year! October 27. So early.
I also joined the Beta Alpha Psi to carve pumpkins with Big Brothers and Big Sisters ^_^ Finally done something I enjoy... It's been a while. Here's a collage.

When Will My Life Take a Turning Point...?

Sorry about all these emo posts... Well, all my posts have been emo. If anyone is actually reading this. I remember when I used to blog on Xanga. All my posts there were all emo too. It was just me talking about my everyday life. Same thing happens everyday.

I've been trying really hard to do something about it, but I'm never given the chance to suceed... This semester, I know I need a job because I'm graduating. I attend all the events that accounting firms hold. I network as much as I can. I've met a lot of new people and learned a lot of new things. I even popped out of another barrier that I've created on myself by doing the xAct case study competition. Job itself has contributed the most stress I've had this semester... How far do I have to reach to get what I want... Or need... I've done all that I could ever do. My mom's friend told me that in China, they have a saying, "If it's yours, it's yours." She told me not to worry because the economy is still bad. On the other side, some people look down on me because I still have some crappy job even after attending college.

Does my past have to affect my present? Just because my G.P.A. cannot compete with 95% of the students in the school of management, I can't provide quality in work as good as the others do...? I don't believe that I cannot get a job because the economy is bad. I don't get a job because the employers don't see success in me judging by my resume. I'm not a good enough candidate for them because my grades are bad and I don't have leadership roles in school clubs.

Besides jobs, there's school. Although I'm overwhelmed by school work, it's not affecting me as much as this job crap has been because I know I have more important things to worry about. I'm sorry, Victoria. I haven't had much time to call you or write to you.

What should I do if I complete college without a job...? I was watching YouTube for a little bit and I notice all these Asians on the top subscribed users list and I wondered... Why can't I do something to make a difference? My roommate told me there are three kinds of people. Those that wants to do something and do it. Those that wants to do something but hesitant at taking initiative. And those that wants to do something but don't take any step further. I'm the one that is hesitant at taking initiative. Sophomore year, I wanted to start an Asians Arts & Craft club. Junior year, I brought it up again. Summer, I brought it up again. Never happened.

When will that day come when my life takes a turning point? I'm tired of feeling down every two days...

Happiest day of my life.

Fruit Ninja

Even more fun on an XBox 360 Kinet! :]

Employers

How do they know you're a bad candidate and just get declined base on your resume if you haven't gotten a chance to present yourself?

Happy Birthday!

Now I understand what my mom mean. After 21, birthdays just feel like any other ordinary day lol. Though I had fun with her

Team Presentations

If one man sinks, the whole crew sinks.

Thankfully, that was not me, but I had a lot of fun doing the PwC xAct competition! I just wished that it was not part of my most busiest time of the semester with job applications, interview, mid-term, and loaded with homework.

Everyday I'm Shuckle-ing

Never Seen So Many Fucking Dumb People in My Life in One Day...

I've been doing a PwC xAct Competition recently. I don't like being a leader, but when I'm in groups, I like doing things my way. I'm already busy all day and I volunteered to make the presentation script by myself. I have no rights to complain about that but this one partner haven't done a single fucking thing all two weeks. This morning, he texted me asking if I can send him the revised copy. The only portion that needed revision was his part... Although I typed out the whole script myself, my three other group members helps so much. They helped with all the planning, what to say, and did everything as a group. The one person that didn't do anything for the group was always the first one leaving when we meet up. He says he has to go study, but he's really going back to his room to play games (because we're in the same residential hall). It really fucking pissed me off when he texted me this morning. I wanted to tell him to go do it himself. He hasn't done a single thing for the group.

Just when that's over, the guy at the food store couldn't be anymore dumb. If you don't know how to make the sub, then ask someone who knows! He made my sub completely wrong. Used pork when I clearly asked for chicken. He didn't know how to use the oven, so he put my sub aside and made the next person's sub before asking for help to use the oven. I wanted to punch him in the face so bad. My life doesn't revolve around you. Time is money. I don't have all day to wait for you to make my dinner. A simple 3minute sub took him 15minutes.

It's 9:50pm. I've been studying and in class all day. I took an exam at 6pm. All I want is a peaceful night to study for my exam tomorrow and prepare for my interview on Thursday. Why can't people smarten up and do things right?

Average People...

We never get the opportunities to prove ourselves that we can be good candidates too... Foolish of me to have such thought that maybe I could be lucky at what I truly aim for...

Overachieving Attempt

Doing more than I can handle...

Exams on Sept. 29, Oct. 5, 5, 12.
PWC xAct Competition: Sept. 22 - Oct. 5 to prepare, Presentation Oct. 6...
Big Four applications are due Sept. 27, 27, 28, 29...
Mmm... Life at its best! :)

Doing Something You Enjoy in Life...

Never acceptable if it's not a stable income or a contribution to a corporate society.

Winning

Fuzzy feeling of excitement inside~

Not something I get everyday :3

Socializing

I was just trying to make new friends... Why the FUCK do you have to ignore me and talk to your other friends about fantasy football, booze, or getting out of class? This is why I don't have that many male friends. You guys need to learn to pretend that you care even if you don't.

Simplicity

I like the method of what I've learned. Simplicity will only lead to confusion.

Welcome Senior year! Hopefully the last year.

How to make textbooks more effective

Make it shorter and get to the point.

One Creepy Ass Drive Back from Boston...

Just had a barbecue at my cousin's house for Andy's middle school graduation. While I was driving Victoria back home, we were stuck between Exit 14 and 15 on I-95 Northbound. No cars were moving. 3 Fire trucks showed up and then 2 more cruisers. We were stuck there for a good 40minute before any cars were to move again. When I reached the accident site, there were just shattered glass all over the highway.

I safely drove Victoria back home and I headed home. I was really tired because it was about 11:40 already because of the traffic. Damn irresponsible people getting into accidents. Every. Single. Weekend. Last week I drove back home from Boston, someone crashed and the 2nd car went for a spin just near Quincy exit. The cars were not removed when I passed by that day, but today, the accident was in the middle of the highway, so they kinda had to remove it.

So I was really tired. I tried to keeping myself awake but everything was getting blurry around me, especially those stupid people with bright ass lights shining through my mirrors. I blasted my radio and sang out loud to the songs on the radio. I felt my car was swirling left and right and I was scared, but I was tired. I don't know if I fell asleep or not, but I reached Exit 4, the exit right before Attleboro, at 12:06am and I was almost unaware of it. I was like holy shit, how fast was I driving? I was driving on the left lane, so I was going pretty fast. That was 20minutes. Usually from Chinatown to Attleboro takes an hour at least.

So I was like, oh well, at least I'm home now. Still a bit drowzy, I saw Exit 3 and went off. The moment I feel my turn off the highway, I knew I got off the wrong exit. I continue driving down just to see where I am. I saw Tiffany St. and I was like Hey! This road leads to my house! So I took sharp right onto Tiffany St. I remember I'm suppose to go under a bridge if I go back home from Tiffany St., but I'm not seeing any bridges... Right now, it's 12:20am and it's getting REALLY foggy. I started getting scared. It felt like one of those horror movies where you get lost driving and all of a sudden it gets really foggy and some OOGIE BOOGIE MUNSTAH JUMPS OUT IN FRONT OF YOUR CAR AND SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF YOU. Except nothing jumped out. But Tiffany St. suddenly became West St. I reach to a dead end and I almost drove into it. I hit the breaks immediately and turned back quickly. I hate dead ends all my life. I use to think dead ends are places where it leads to a swamp where ugly boogie monsters live. I turned on my high beams and quickly and safely drove back out onto the main street of where I turned making sure I don't turn into a random small road. I reached to the main street and took a right. The area was really woody and foggy. I didn't know where I was until I reached the Fire Station when I knew I was in South Attleboro. I quickly, turned around and headed home. 

I thought I was still dreaming... Or dead! O_O No, I'm not dead. I came home, found a spider on my wall, sprayed it with body spray, slapped it with my slippers, and found a dead beetle. I threw it out and started blogging.

Internet in a Nutshell

"...the Internet is shackling us to everything that we have ever said, or that anyone has said about us, making the possibility of digital self-reinvention seem like an ideal from a distant era." - Jeffrey Rosen

Girls these days...

I was going 90 on the left lane and she still cuts me off... Girls with BMW are nothing to mess with.

School

Can be a bitch sometimes.

Greatest Remedy

Crying.

New Trend of the Internet

Reminiscing the old days.

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