2nd ICAI 2022

International Conference on Automotive Industry 2022

Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic

is obvious that project teaching places higher demands on the teacher (Kratochvílová, 2006), the result is a deeper understanding of the subject taught by the student. 1.3.2 Auto Manufacturing Business Simulation The Auto Manufacturing Business Simulation is part of the portfolio of digital business games of IndustryMasters GmbH https://www.industrymasters.de/. This digital business game is a cloud-based simulation. Different teams act like a complete automotive company and form a market. The teams play against each other and have to make decisions about research & development (R&D) activities, production, marketing, human resources (HR) and finance. It takes 20 quarters or five virtual years to go through on simulation cycle. The main goal is maximizing the share price of the company, the simulation calculates the share price and other financial data after each quarter. The players have to make the following decisions: • R&D: investment in drive technology (electrification, autonomous and connective driving), development of cars/ product launching (type: product features; engine: combustion, hybrid, battery driven) • Production: strategic decision of production capacity in Europe, USA and China • Marketing: pricing policy, marketing activities and budget • HR: hiring or laying of managers, salary planning and ensuring highmotivation • Finance: complete financial planning including investment plan, KPI for: profit and loss, balance-sheet, cash f low The market environment is in addition changing from year to year. Typical changes are: • New environmental regulations in term of CO 2 emissions • Impact of CO 2 emission scandal • New trade tariffs between USA and China • Changed buyer preferences • Governmental initiatives for low emission cars The players have access to all different KPI, which are good visualized. The facilitator (moderator) of the game gets additional information after each quarter. A simulation briefing summarizes the actual situation in terms of: geographical markets, products, SWOT analysis, investment plan and main KPI’s. The complexity of the simulation game is quite high. The simulation game has an avatar, which gives the team different hints what they have to observe and offers the team direct recommendations. Also some decisions can be delegated to the simulation program, e.g. for human resources. This reduces the number of decisions which each team has to do. 1.3.3 Comparison of two introduced programs Both simulation games have the same focus: increasing the share price of an automotive company in a competitive market. Derived from a strategic plan, the participating teams have to make decisions in different categories. Table 1 compares and summarizes the different games.

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