Management by Doing 202107

Assignment 1

If you have started reading this document before the PDF file “Welcome”, stop immediately. Read
the Welcome document first.

Goals:

1. The primary goal of assignment 1 is to get you started with the management of your
simulated company.

2. The business simulation iBizSim is an on-line application. You will need to get acquainted
with the user interface of iBizSim.

3. You will need to register on-line in order to get access to the application.

4. You will need to be able to login and access the various functions of the application.

5. You will need to start working with your teammates, accepting their strengths and
weaknesses, and building up a good, functioning team.

6. You will need to understand the working of your simulated company.

Explanations:

1. You are taking part in a course that uses a business simulation. This means that you will be
managing a simulated company. Management in the real corporate world is not a one-person
function. It is a team function. Hence, you will be working in a team, usually with 2 other
students.

2. The simulated company is a manufacturing company that produces consumer goods and
markets them to customers in different market regions.

3. You have been assigned to a team of usually 3 students. Each student team is assigned to a
simulated company. Your simulated company is identified by a company ID. The company
ID has the form x-y, where x and y are digits. Note that there are no spaces within the
company ID.

© 2021 by Prof. Dr. Ashok N. Ullal, Hölderlinstrasse 13, 72127 Kusterdingen, Germany
 Management by Doing 202107

4. Your user ID is generated when you register for the course. It consists of the first 3 letters of
your first name written in lower case, the first 3 letters of your last name written in lower
case and a number. Hence, all you need to remember is that small number.

5. The most important tool that management executives use is the real world is a spreadsheet
program. People who work with Microsoft Windows would usually use Microsoft Excel.
Other people who work with open source operating systems like Linux would use
LibreOffice Calc. You will be using the spreadsheet program in this course for analyzing the
results of a period and planning the decisions of the following period. Hence, you must have
some level of fluency of working with the spreadsheet program that is available on your
laptop or PC.

Tasks:

1. Register for the course:

You may not use your mobile phone or tablet for this. You must use a laptop or a PC.

I have uploaded a PDF file “How to register for the course GMP2107” and an XLSX file
“GMP2107-student_list”. You will need both these files for registering.

Read the PDF file first and familiarize yourself with the process of registration. Then open
the XLSX file and find the row with your name.

Register yourself by entering your information exactly as is written in the student list. Your
registration will not be accepted if you change any of the information.

2. Pick up the activation email that has been sent to your email address.

You may not use your mobile phone or tablet for this. You must use a laptop or a PC.

Click on the activation link. Your browser should now display your login credentials. Write
down or take a screen shot of your login credentials. I will not help you if you were to tell me
that you registered but don’t remember your user ID and password.

3. Login using the credentials you have received.

Immediately after the first login, you will be asked to enter the password that you would like
to use. Do that and logout immediately.

Please note that your user name at Moodle is different from your user ID at iBizSim.

© 2021 by Prof. Dr. Ashok N. Ullal, Hölderlinstrasse 13, 72127 Kusterdingen, Germany
 Management by Doing 202107

4. Login again using the password you entered.

The first thing that you need to do is to download the documentation and the various reports
that are available. The reports are available in Excel and PDF formats. You must download
the reports in Excel format because you will use some spreadsheet program to analyze the
reports.

Don’t forget to logout after you have finished this task.

5. If you have any problems registering or logging in, send me an email immediately. The
subject line of all emails that you write to me must have the following format:

course ID, company ID, user ID, your full name

6. The tasks 1 through 5 are carried out individually by each student. This task 6 initiates the
team work.

Read the user manual in detail. Analyze the management report of your company for period
0, the initial situation. The company has been running for some time. Period 0 represents the
last quarter of the previous year.

Submissions:

You are required to upload a confirmation document in DOCX format on Moodle with the following
content:
“I confirm that I have registered for the course, can log in to my account, have changed the password
and downloaded the user manual and the various reports for period 0.”

Enjoy this course. I can assure you that it will show you how interesting management can be.

© 2021 by Prof. Dr. Ashok N. Ullal, Hölderlinstrasse 13, 72127 Kusterdingen, Germany