Capstone® challenges students to draw on their acquired knowledge to create and execute a strategy in a competitive and dynamic environment.

1. Tashara Earl
Nahla Fekry
Thanh Le
Marquita Washington
Baldwin

2. Mission Statement
To provide our customers with sensor solutions and
products that exceed their expectations for price,
reliability, performance and size.

3. How did we make decisions?
 No one person made all the decision. Team members worked together.
If a team member introduced a decision that person was responsible
for explaining that decision to the members so that each member
understood why this decision needed to be made.
 Respected the decisions of teammates; listened and provided feedback
or confirmation.
 If a single decision couldn’t be made, the members compromised

4. Research and Development
 Building our product to ideal specifications; stayed close to “ideal
expectations”
 Exceed expectations
 Round 8 didn’t exceed expectations because there weren’t any benefits to
go beyond because there wasn’t a next year.

5. Marketing
 Compared product potential and actual then made an informed decision on market
share.
 Observed our competitors price
 From round to round the team always followed segment rules to drop price by $0.50
 If pricing was of low expectation, remained at max price but when segment price ranges
fell at $0.50 per year we adjusted the price accordingly – dropped the price to increase
customer appeal but refrained from dropping too low to avoid reducing profits
 Invested heavily in promo and sales budget to achieve maximum customer awareness
and customer accessibility taking in consideration exceeding maximum contribution will
cause diminishing returns

6. Production
 When forecasting it was always important to take in account the inventory
on hand to avoid over producing
 Automation for low end we step for 10 because we didn’t plan to change the
performance and size but for other segments gradually increased
automation which allowed us to make changes to performance and size so
product could move accordingly along the Perceptual Map

7. Finance
 Team borrowed long term debt rather than issue common stock because common stock
had higher cost and affected stock price
 30 days accounts payable because the team wanted to pay our vendors quickly however,
we had a 45 day accounts receivable policy which meant our team had to wait a few more
days to collect outstanding funds – goal was to pay our debt immediately but give
customers longer time to repay their debt
 Capital that was gained in earlier rounds was used to invent new products and penetrate
existing segments
 Capital that amassed in the later rounds (6-8) gave the team financial flexibility to pay
dividends, pay debt and retire stocks

8. Human Resource
 Invested the max contribution in both recruiting and training hours
TQM
 Initially the team decided against investing in Benchmarking because
our administration cost was already low; $2.57M
 In the following round, we recognized that investing in
Benchmarking would provide in the current round and remaining
rounds

9. Strategy
 In the beginning the focus was on two segments and understanding how
promo and sales budgets effect customers
 The strategy changed in round 3 to dominate all segments
 Focused on increasing revenue and profits
 Capitalize on large market share

10. Weaknesses
 Very conservative and caution which suppressed market share
potential
 Round 7, Low End segment received very low customer expectations
because we were delayed with making changes to performance and
size
 Failed to buy necessary capacity to support the production and sales
therefore stocked out several times

11. What did we learn?