Jan 24, 2020 Jan 24 at 1:44pm
Prior to beginning this discussion thread, “Business planning for 2018, and how to cash in on the New Year” was read. Now that four quarters of running Hisco has been accomplished, a tremendous amount of information regarding production planning, staffing, negotiations, budgeting, variances, and more was able to be learned. If the opportunity to replay any one quarter would arise in the TriCorp Simulation (2016), I would re-play the first quarter. I felt that this was a key quarter and also a slightly overwhelming one because your feet are just getting dipped into the water of how everything works. Decisions I would change would be to have my numbers readily available and calculated prior to using a role play call. When attempting to return to the numerical screens, I lost a call altogether. It is important to have the information prior to negotiations. I would also adjust the amount of lines sought and timelines associated with this. R&D investments would be more aggressively sought from the beginning as Matek got a jump on Hisco here in the first quarter. The first quarter did not deal with the exceeded budget appropriately and made cuts to vital items. It may have been suitable to look at prices in this quarter as well but this was only considered in subsequent quarters. I agree with Mosca (2017) that the competition is battling every day for market share, penetration, sales, etc. It is important to have a pro-active mindset and be looking forward faster. Biery (2013) would argue that maintaining these critical elements continuously are part of maintaining the organizational health. They can be used to gauge the temperature of the business to see if it healthy, has a cold, or potentially is ill.
Ashley Johnson
References
Mosca, L. (2017, October 18). Business planning for 2018, and how to cash in on the new year.Forbes. Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/louismosca/2017/10/18/business-planning-for-2018/#6f5b12f6692d(Links to an external site.)
Biery, M. E. (2013, September 1). How healthy is your business? 6 ways to take its ‘temperature.’
Forbes.Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/sageworks/2013/09/01/how-healthy-is-your-business-using-industry-data-to-check-the-temperature/#26ca43e1704a
TriCorp Simulation (2016). Growing your business - A management simulation. Retrieved from https://ashford.trisimulation.com/Simulation
4:38am Jan 31 at 4:38am
Mosca encourages planners to start planning for the next year by understanding the challenges and successes of the current year and how the coming year is impacted as a result (Mosca, 2017). Decision-makers need to maximize profits by focusing more on themselves and less on the competition (2017). It is essential to get your executive team to buy in, working quarter by quarter on a five-year plan (2017). Look at how you did in terms of revenue, cash flow, and profit (2017). Gotsch and Case tell us to take strategic planning very seriously, starting at least by the 4th quarter of the prior year (Gotsch & Case, 2017). Critical elements of productive planning include defining goals, doing your research, engaging consumers, getting the buy-in of staff, and using your plan to develop a budget (2017).
In the case of the Hisco Corporation, Sloan set a goal to increase net income to somewhere between $300K and $400K (TriCorp Simulation, 2016). While I accomplished my original goal, some areas could have been managed better (2016). In hindsight, I would replay the first quarter and would have negotiated more aggressively with Victoria Cash right away for the higher amount of $185K (2016). There were so many areas needing investment immediately, including research and development - R&D (2016). While I did the right thing investing in R&D right away, it was at the expense of marketing, advertising, and engineering resulting in loss of sales, market share, technical quality as well as perceived quality (2016). Hisco Corporation, even though sales increased, did not develop the same brand image it was desperate to create as its competitors did; this could potentially continue to harm our image in the upcoming year (2016). Further, a new competitor to the market, Eastern, infringed upon our market share (2016). Hisco Corporation exceeded its credit limit that first quarter and, with additional investment by Victoria Cash, could have had more funds for marketing, advertising, and engineering (2016).
Another major opportunity lost was negotiation with Stall Brick sooner as labor capacity needed to be ramped up sooner in order to meet demand as well as production capacity (2016). Further, new hires were only 50% effective, and increasing effectiveness, as well as labor efficiency, should have been priority right away (2016). The authors are correct in that planning should really have begun by the last quarter of the prior year, at least (Gotsch & Case, 2017). Hisco Corporation had a bit of a late start (TriCorp Simulation, 2016). We could have also invested in Iona Lines right away to ensure that we could ramp up production throughput to meet demands, and we could have been more conservative in our negotiations as we did not need all five lines going for 2020; this resulted in overflow items, which then has to be stored (2016).
Further, there was a mismatch between production capacity and labor capacity; production capacity exceeded labor capacity (TriCorp Simulation, 2016). Also, efficiency was inadequate, and there was a great deal of idle time (2016). This was not the most efficient year, resources were not maximized, and I have concerns regarding the upcoming year with Hisco penetrating the European Community (EC) with attempts to maximize raw materials, and potentially taking advantage of any surplus of products (2016). Hisco needs to focus on engineering to improve its technical quality as well as perceived quality; marketing and advertisement are also areas on which to focus (2016).
References
Fotsch, B., & Case, J. (2017, September 5). Six tips for planning a great 2018 (Links to an external site.). Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/fotschcase/2017/09/05/six-tips-for-planning-a-great-2018/2/#634dece01060
Mosca, L. (2017, October 18). Business planning for 2018, and how to cash in on the new year (Links to an external site.). Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/louismosca/2017/10/18/business-planning-for-2018/#6f5b12f6692d
TriCorp Simulation (2016). Growing your business - A management simulation. Retrieved from https://ashford.trisimulation.com/Simulation