Students will participate as teams for a total of seven (7) quarters of the Airlines Simulation. At the end of the seven quarters, each team will prepare a paper analyzing their results. In each class section, ten teams will compete against each other. Once the simulation begins, all decisions must be completed each week by SATURDAY AT MIDNIGHT; after which time the simulation will be automatically advanced. Each team will designate a LEADER who will be responsible for entering the decisions into the simulation each week. Only the LEADER can enter decisions into the system.
The analysis is to include the following:
- Team members and the role of each in the Airline
- The name of the Airline
- The team's Airline strategy (narrow low-cost, broad low-cost, narrow differentiation, or broad differentiation). The Strategy should answer the four questions: what products and services will be offered, what unique value will be provided, what resources are required, and how will you maintain your competitive advantage?
- A Summary of the Decisions made for each period (1-7), including Fares, Marketing, Fleet, Scheduling, Financing, Human Resources, and any Special Decisions. Explain why each decision was made and how it fits your business strategy.
- Analysis of Results for each period, including a review of Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Operations Report, and Company Sales Report. Analysis should include reasons why you got the results that you did.
- What Decisions were made for each subsequent round and why-Based on the Analysis of each period's results. Decisions are then made for the next round, taking into account results and competitive actions.
The Final Paper should include the following sections: - ABSTRACT (summary of the key points of the paper, overall results, and lessons learned)
- INTRODUCTION and BACKGROUND-statement of the purpose of the paper, contents, and background for the simulation. Also include the team members and their roles
- Statement of the Airline's overall STRATEGY explicitly answers the four strategic questions and why you selected that Strategy.
- An ANALYSIS Sections for each of the seven (7) periods covering decisions, results at the end of each round, reasons for the results, and changes for the next round.
- SUMMARY and CONCLUSIONS: A summary of the overall results for all five (5) rounds and assessing why you got the results and what you might want to do differently if you could do it over.
- What you LEARNED ABOUT STRATEGY and managing a real business from the simulation (each team member should have one or two learning point)