Strategy Simulation Helper

                Capsim is a strategy simulation used by the Strategic Management course BUS M 581 in the business school at BYU. The simulation has students to take control of a company and compete with other student teams and requires them to make strategic decisions regarding product development, marketing, financial operations, and so on and essentially tests these decisions in the simulation’s market environment. While these decisions give the game an unpredictable element, the simulation variables, such as total segment sales each round and customer expectations of products, are given and predictable. A PDF providing more in-depth information on the simulation can be found here, and while some of the system’s terms and variables will be explained in this document, not all of them will be.

                This Simulation Helper project was designed to make team decisions simple; it gives the “big picture” view of the industry by providing the following functionality:

·         Load previous round results, specifically products

o   Color-codes these results based on how closely they meet customer specification

o   Calculates some additional values, such as margin estimates

·         Graph of all products on segment expectations, giving an idea of where the industry is

·         Segment analysis which calculates the limitations of any given segment as well as attempting to predict next round’s customer scores

·         TQM analysis which takes the predicted values for TQM initiatives to determine if they are worth the cost

                The project’s effect on the simulation was staggering: team performance exceeded that of every other team in the class and was in the 99^th percentile through the final round among all participants.