Capstone questions

PDF Guide Section 1

What industry are you in? What is your product? Describe your customers.

What are 3 important pieces of information you can find in the Capstone Courier?

How does completing the Situation Analysis help you?

What does the little red flag symbol mean?

How does the marketing department need to coordinate with the production department?

How does finance have to coordinate with all departments?

PDF Guide Section 2

How many distinct market segments exist in this simulation? What are they?

How frequently do market segments drift (i.e., change position)? Where do you find information about the drift rate of each segment?

In the simulation, what characteristics are captured by the term positioning?

Which buyer criteria change each year, and which remain the same every year?

Look at the example buying criteria on page 7: based on this example, would you always want to compete based on price?

HR Module Which three areas must be addressed when the HR module is active? What benefit does your company gain from investing in training and recruiting? How much do 2nd shift workers cost in comparison to 1st shift? What is the minimum employee turnover percentage your company will have to replace each year? How does your productivity index influence the number of employees you need to produce your product?

Section 3 How many months per year can your product be on the ideal spot for the market segment? Look at the example in figure 3.1 (pg. 8). Looking at the circle on the right, where would you want your product positioned in January? If your product is positioned half way across the rough cut, how much will your customer survey score drop? How much do price expectations drop each year? Is this the same for all segments? What happens to your customer survey score if you price your product $1 BELOW the segments criteria? (i.e., less than customers expect.) How is demand for your product calculated? How much is your customer survey score reduced if you change your Accounts Receivable policy to 60 days?

TQM Module What are the two categories of investment you may make when the TQM module is on?

TQM initiatives follow an S-Shaped diminishing returns function. What is the minimum investment you need to make in an investment to have any meaningful impact?

On the high end, is there a number beyond which you would not want to invest because of diminishing returns?

Where can you find projected impacts of your TQM related investment decisions?

Section 4 What two factors affect material costs? (Hint: see Figure 4.1).

How are new product positioning costs determined?

What happens when two or more products are put into R&D projects at the same time?

How does automation affect R&D projects?

What happens to a sensors age when it is moved?

How much do segment price expectations change each round?

What budget item influences customer awareness? How is awareness calculated?

How much does each unit of new capacity cost? When do you have access to new capacity that is purchased? What implication does this have for sales projections?

How much does your labor cost fall for each unit (level) of automation? How much labor cost reduction would result from an automation level of 5? Of 8? What is the brokerage fee for issuing new bonds? What do the first three digits in the bond series number indicate? The last four digits?

What is the penalty for taking an emergency loan?

Is it possible to make money off of the early retirement of a bond issue?

What happens when you set you're A/P to 120 days?

PDF Guide Section 5

What should you use the Front Page of the Capston Courier for?

Where do you find the prime interest rate for the upcoming year?

Which section of the courier tells you inventory levels for all products in the industry?

Where do you look for information about competitors product revision plans? What information will it not provide you about the product revision?

Under what conditions will a product revision show up in the Courier?

What does the Market Share Actual vs. Potential Chart provide you? How should you interpret this information?

Section 6 What determines how accurate your pro formas will be? How is depreciation accounted for in your financials? Is depreciation of fixed assets a source of long-term funding? Why or why not?

Section 7 What are the benefits of TQM/Sustainability projects? Which TQM initiative can help you lower labor costs of production? (example from PDF Guide.) Define complement. What is the minimum level of spending on recruitment? What kind of employee do you get at that level of spending? What are the benefits of training? How much does training cost per hour?

Section 8 Does your answer to the Ethics Plug-in question affect company performance?

Section 9 Situation Analysis 1. Which five activities does situation analysis consist of? 2. Review your results in your Situation Analysis homework

Section 10 How do you calculate the segment demand for next year? How many years out is it possible to project segment demand? Which product attributes are reported in the Couriers Segment Analysis page? What formula calculates customer demand for your product in a segment? What is the cost for carrying inventory? In which cell should you enter your worst case sales forecast? Your best case?

Section 11 What measures are evaluated in the Balanced Scorecard?

Section 12 What are the six basic strategies?