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Individual Learning Essay
There are many things I have learned in the Strategy to Success Module. I consider them all positive and beneficial for my working life. In business world, it is not that easy to run a company successfully. There are so many factors we need to consider when making decisions to manage a company. Many decisions, in my opinion, are very difficult to make. This is because those decisions are made without sufficient data or supporting reason. If a company makes wrong decisions, it could end up with smaller profit than expected, great loss or even bankruptcy. The important knowledge I have learned in this module is divided into three main points, which are Manufacturing, Marketing, Finance, Strategic Planning and Team Work.
Manufacturing
First of all, I would like to talk about my role as a Manufacturing Manager. I have learned that all the manufacturing activities are interrelated. If I make a mistake in an activity, it would affect the whole manufacturing processes. The first decision I had to make was whether to produce or sub-contract the products we needed. I chose to produce all of the products by myself for all eight quarters. It was actually the right decision since the unit cost of each product was lower than the cost of sub-contracting and there had never been any production problem. The second decision I had to make was on the units we are going to produce. I have to admit that I made a mistake in this area. As my team thought that to be conservative was the best way to protect us from making loss or getting bankruptcy, we kept our lease units to be ,000 for at least 6 quarters. Moreover, we didn’t fully utilize our production capacity in order to achieve the lowest lease expense. Therefore, we had the lowest amount of both products to sell compared to the other team through 6 quarters. Certainly, we faced the problem of having the least sales for several quarters which was one of the contributing factors. Fortunately, we had expanded our lease unit as well as fully utilized our production capacity in the last two quarters, which finally helped us to have better performance. From this mistake, I have learned that to be conservative is not always the best way to run the business. There are many more factors such as the potential demand, rivals’ performance, market share goal, etc. we need to think in order to make a production/expansion plan. The third decision I had to make was how much of the raw material we needed to order each time. I think that it was not a difficult decision at all, because this activity didn’t require complicate planning. There was only one main point we had to keep in mind which was that we must have appropriate amount of raw material in our stock each quarter in case we don’t receive the amount of raw material we ordered The forth decision I had to make was on the amount spent on the quality of each product. I have learned that with different target groups and 4Ps strategy, each product required a different amount of quality spent. My team was successful in positioning our product in the market which helped me to be able to invest a proper amount on quality for each product. However, I had to make sure that I had the research information on quality in order to compare our quality spending with other teams and adjust our spending if needed. Finally, I had to make decisions on the number of workers to hire and amount spent on HR development which both of this activities always go together. I have learned that if I invest adequate amount on HR development, my workers’ productivity won’t decline and the business would save the cost concerning workers. I did enjoy my role as well as gained lots of knowledge and experiences that I had never gone through before.
Marketing
Although I was not responsible for the marketing part, I yet have learned a lot from all activities that were under this function since marketing and manufacturing were so much connected to each other. For the marketing part, having the right 4Ps strategy is the most important thing we must achieve. First of all, we need to position our products in the market. By the second quarter in the simulation, we started to recognize the different characteristic of each product we were selling. The first product was to be positioned at the upper-lower market and the second product was to be positioned at the middle and lower-end market. This helped us to be able to identify the quality strategy as well as the other 4Ps strategy. The first product had the higher price and better quality than the second one since it was aiming at the higher level of customers. We believed that quality was very important for product one. For product , price was very important. We thought that because product two was price sensitive, we need to review all the price levels from the marketing research and adjust our price to be competitive continuously. Moreover, promotion is one of the most important strategies we need to plan. From my experience of running the simulation, I have learned that the wrong mixture of promotions could cause the severe problem of not being able to sell the products as forecasted. To have good promotions strategy, we must review the marketing researches of each promotion and find out which are the effective promotions for each product and compare the amount of our promotion with the other teams. Then we must match our promotions mixture with our sales forecast. I think that right mixture of promotions strategy will help us not to have a high number of forecast errors. Marketing and manufacturing department have to work closely together. The marketing department would be responsible to make a sales forecast while the manufacturing department must carry enough amount of inventories to sell (the amount forecasted plus extra amount in case the actual demand exceed the amount forecasted)
Finance
I think working in a finance department is quite tough since you must find ways to generate enough money to do all activities in business. Making a loan is very important for a business that really wants to grow. If a business wants to expand its production capacity in order to sell more products in the market for higher profitability, loaning money is an good funding alternative. Of course, to loan money has a cost as well as create business risk, but I believe that if we have a good financial planning together with good marketing and manufacturing planning, we would be able to have a financial leverage and provide higher ROE to the company’s shareholders. One more important thing I have learned from the simulation was that cash flow is so crucial for a company. If the company doesn’t have enough cash, the company wouldn’t be able to operate. There would be no money to buy raw materials, hire workers etc. Therefore, cash flow of a company must be very well managed. If a company is not sure whether it has enough cash on hand, it must loan money from a financial institution. My experience from the simulation of having to pay a very high interest rate for the emergency loan when I didn’t have enough cash on hand had taught me very well about how to manage cash flow.
Strategic Planning
I have learned that strategic planning must be done very carefully. This means that the plan must be flexible and could be modified when an unexpected situation happen. I am convinced that in the real world, things won’t always be up to a company’s expectation and good planning would then be a measurement whether the company could perform under an uncertain situation.
Teamwork
The last but not least point I would like to mention is about teamwork. I believe that working individually is very important to a certain level. Without good teamwork, a company would never be successful. I have learned from the simulation that no matter how good you can do your jobs but without a good teamwork, all your jobs are meaningless. For example, I am responsible in the manufacturing department. I though I had a good planning and managing strategy. But one big problem I faced was that I had too much ending inventories in the first five quarters and too few inventories in the last three quarters. Our sales forecast errors were huge and we always got low point in this part. I know this it was because of the lack of enough cooperation between manufacturing and marketing part. I guess the best way would be that each person firstly does his own job and then reviews and adjusts the plans together in order to come up with plans that are effective and compatible.
There are still many other things that I have learned in this course, which I would not be able to write down all in this essay. All of the knowledge is very useful for my life. Nevertheless, I really appreciate all the efforts and support that our lecturer has given to the students.
In the future, no matter what department I will work in, this module will definitely help me a lot. The fact is that I might face situations that I have never faced before. Therefore, I must use every situation and experience that I encounter to develop my skills and improve my ability. I believe that throughout this course, I have already stepped into the process of learning and growing for my future career life.
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