Financial/entrepreneurial simulation software

Quote from Dr. J : I'm taking an online class as part of my MBA and it's about starting up a PC company in an online simulation. Each quarter you make decisions about sales offices, product lines, etc etc, and capital is infused at certain intervals. Grades are given on overall performance at the end of the semester. It all seems rather hokey. Has anyone done a simulation like this for a class before?

That sounds interesting, but sounds really odd at the same time. What is the name of the software?

Yeah - I did a similar one but it was a simulation of running a Benihana restaurant. Your output changes depending on the allocation of internal resources. Google 'Benihana simulation' for more info - that may help you out a little.

Each time you run it you should get closer to the ideal combination of what gets allocated where. We found it useful to create a matrix of different possibilities and run as many as we could to try to optimize things.

Quote from Jabbit : That sounds interesting, but sounds really odd at the same time. What is the name of the software?

http://gm.marketplace-live.com/?moveTo=1

The game can be setup by quarters - for our game we have 6 quarters (weeks in real time). In each quarter you have a certain set of decisions to make like what your product lines/target markets will be, where to setup sales offices, etc.

Welcome to a fantastic representation of entrepreneurship. No matter the logic that you put into your business decisions, if it doesn't line up with the logic programmed into the simulation you'll fail miserably. I'm sure you have a strong desire to not lose the game, you would be best served to find somebody who has taken that class in a previous quarter/semester and get their advice on what worked and doesn't work and attempt to copy their winning strategy.

i've done similar simulations before, but it was for operations management and supply chain management courses, not for entre or fin.

Well we are at the final Q (6). I asked the prof how many times he's "run" the simulation and if there's an optimal "solution" (or approach) - I wasn't looking for an "answer", just the complexity of the software piqued my interest. To me, I figured that if it's handing out "grades" (sales by market, etc) to each competitor, there must be some benchmark or set of rules by which it is doing this, and therefore there is an optimum strategy to maximize your "score". I can't see it working any other way. His reply? No - no "secret" to the simulation. He said that it depends on the competitors (DUH).

The simulation is really setup for multiple people per group/company - there is far too much information in terms of market reporting, estimation, etc, for one person to really give it the attention it needs without spending 15 hours a week doing so.

I'm doing fairly well in the game but some *inconsistencies* bother me. For example, a competitor consistently sells more per month than their fixed capacity. It's pretty glaring but I am not sure how it's happening (or I am missing something).

Quote from shuriken : i've done similar simulations before, but it was for operations management and supply chain management courses, not for entre or fin.

are you talking about the beer game?