Week 6 - Simulation Periods 1 & 2

I felt our team did a great job communicating for the decisions within Periods 1 & 2.  We decided to just use the Kodiak team discussion, but it did work because we were actively participating multiple times each day.  Each team member made recommendations as to what decisions should be made based on the research reports.  For the most part, each member had similar thoughts as to what decisions needed to be made, so it was easy for all of us to work together.  I anticipate the great teamwork to continue throughout the rest of the semester.

The first decision we had to make as a team was regarding social media.  The choice that had to be made was working with Facebook and Twitter or an interactive blog.  In addition to choosing between these two we had to decide whether we wanted to allocate resources for Google Adwords.  Knowing that we offer a premium product and have a premium brand with Allround, I felt comfortable making the recommendation to choose an interactive blog with Adwords instead of Facebook and Twitter.  Also, we know that our core consumer groups are middle-aged with families.  As a team, we decided to run a website in order to message our product appropriately to our family based consumers.  We felt that our core market would be more inclined to use the blog than Facebook and Twitter as well as we could tell the consumers all about the benefits of the product rather than trying to sell it with a quick glimpse of the eye.  I personally know that I just skip all the advertisements I see when I use social media, so I think the team made the correct choice here choosing the blog with Adwords.

For the second period the decision was based around quality assurance.  The team could have decided to move the close to expiration date product to the market to sell it, but there was a large risk that some of the product would be sold after the expiration date.  The second option was the spend $100,000 to dispose of this batch of product.  The last option was to spend $50,000 to give to a 3^rd party who would move the product through the market quicker, but still at a risk as the first option.  The whole team agreed that we should discard the product for $100,000.   This fee was worth it to us so we can maintain our premium brand experience with the consumer.

The second period’s decision reminded me a lot of the company I work for, LEGO.  The mission statement for LEGO is ,”only the best is good enough”.  There was a story of the founder of LEGO explaining to his son who made a wooden toy, prior to the plastic LEGO brick, that he must re-work the toy because the quality in which it was made was not perfect and did not want to leave the consumer with the perception that LEGO produces sub-par products.  LEGO has many tests and settings in place during our production that ensures the LEGO brick is manufactured perfectly, down to the 1/100^th of an inch so that it is compatible with LEGO bricks that were made 50 years ago.  During the manufacturing process, if batches of bricks are not correct then they do not make the final product.  We make sure these bricks are either thrown away or re-worked because we do not want to risk the consumer having a poor first experience, or experience in general, with our premium products.  We felt the decision in PharmaSim was too risky, so we didn’t want the consumers of Allround to have a poor experience with our product, especially since there are many other options to choose from for the consumers.