Icecream Userguide

8/3/2019 Icecream Userguide

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1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 3

2. GENERAL GAMEPLAY .................................................................................................. 4

Login............................................................................................................................... 4Navigation within the game............................................................................................ 4

Making Decisions and Submitting.................................................................................. 5

Evaluation ....................................................................................................................... 5

3. MARKETING................................................................................................................. 6

4. PRODUCTION................................................................................................................ 8Main Page ....................................................................................................................... 8

Warehouse..................................................................................................................... 105. FINANCE .................................................................................................................... 13

Finance Info .................................................................................................................. 13

View Loans................................................................................................................... 136. REPORTS .................................................................................................................... 15

7. CONTACT INFORMATION............................................................................................ 16


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1.INTRODUCTIONWelcome to the Ice-Cream Factory game! You and your team have been appointed as

the Management Board of an ice-cream company. As management, you will have to

oversee the Marketing, Production and Finance aspects of your ice-cream company.

In the game, you will compete with other ice-cream companies for sales and market

share. You and your competitors have one ice-cream manufacturing plant, located in the

same country, but all of you may sell ice-cream in other countries as well. The number ofcountries and the characteristics of each country will be given to you at the start of the

game.

Ice-cream Factory is played in periods. Each period represents one month. At the start of

every period, you will receive a news report, describing the events in the various

countries in the game. Certain events will affect the sales in each country, and affect the

types of ice-cream that people buy. Some other events can affect certain aspects of yourproduction.

To do well in the game, analyze the information provided in the game and in the newsreports to gain a better understanding of the markets and economic situations. Then plot

your business strategies to win customers and make profits!

The rest of the user guide will provide you with detailed instructions on making decisions

in the various aspects of Ice Cream Factory.

Have fun playing ICE CREAM FACTORY!


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2.GENERAL GAMEPLAYA single game is a contest between a number of teams (normally 4 - 8 teams) over a

specified number of periods. The games are independent of one another, and are

distinguished by a unique gamecode. Each team in a particular game will be given adifferent company number.

At the beginning of the game, your team will be issued a user nameandpassword. Use

this information to login to Ice-cream Factory.

Login

Enter your user name andpassword. Click on the submitbutton to login to the system.

Navigation within the game

The menu buttons below allow you to access the different information screens. The infobar below provides you with instant information about your company. The bottom right

hand corner displays your gamecode, company id, and the current period. Click theLogout link to exit the game.

Submit

button

Password

User

name

Logout buttonGame codeCompany IDMarketinProduction

FinanceRe ort

Admin NoticeSubmit


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Making Decisions and Submitting

The 3 areas where you have to make decisions are in Marketing, Production and

Finance. Enter the values in the various input boxes provided in each screen. The entered

values will be retained while you are navigating the different screens, but will only be

submitted to the database when you click the Submitbutton.

The Game Administrator will inform you on the submission deadlines for every period.

You may submit your decisions as many times as you wish before the deadline, but onlythe last decision submitted before the deadline will be used in the calculation of results.

Evaluation

At every period, the inputs of every team will be processed by the simulation engine, andthe results will be generated. In Ice-cream Factory, the companys performance will be

based on:

1) Average Sales Revenues (40%)2) Average Company profits (40%)3) Final Brand (across all areas) (20%)

This means that 40% of the teams score will be based on average sales revenues from allperiods, 40% will be based on average company profits, and the remaining 20% will be

based on the averageBrandvalue of the company. The team with the highest score at the

end of the specified number of periods will be the winner of that game.


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3.MARKETINGIn Ice-Cream Factory, you sell your ice-cream to different countries. Each dotted circle

below represents a different country. Eight different countries will be displayed on

screen, but the countries available in the game will be specified by the GameAdministrator.

To enter a country, click the countrys picture. This will display the countrys

information in the panel.

Explanation of Town Info below:1) Population size: This indicates the number of people in the country that consume

ice-cream.

2) Population Ratio: This ratios indicates the proportion of children (age 0 12),teens (age 13 19) and adults (age 20 and above) in the country

3) Transport cost: This indicates the cost incurred to transport 1 tub of ice-cream tothe country.

You have to set five decisions for every country Price andAdvertising.

Price is the price that you sell to one tub of ice-cream in that particular country. Advertising is the amount you wish to spend on advertising that country. Limits of amount can be soldis the upper limit you wish to sell for each flavor of

ice cream.

Please note the constraints regarding your inputs: there are two buttons on the

information panel, Price button and Ads button. Price button pops up a window

Various towns Town info Price button Ads button


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indicating the minimum price you can set; Ads button pops up a window specifying the

upper limit of expenditure on advertisement.

HHiinnttss aanndd TTiippss:Several factors affect the sales of ice-cream in a particular country. Price and advertisingare two of them. Setting prices lower than your competitors will result in more

customers buying your product. At the same time, spending more on advertising will alsoimprove the sales of your ice-cream. Advertising spending also goes to improving your

companys brand image. Brand is the customers perception of a companys products

and the companys track record. A company with a good brand image will attract morecustomers than a company with a poor brand image. An indicator of the companys brand

image is reflected in the Sales report.

Sales limits are used to control the amount that you wish to sell in each country. This isused to ensure that you do not sell all your ice-cream products in one area and cause a lot

of unsatisfied customers in other areas.


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4.PRODUCTIONMain Page

Every company can produce 3 flavors of ice-cream Chocolate, Vanilla, and Strawberry.

You produce your ice-cream in a single ice-cream factory plant. The location of yourplant will be specified by the Game Administrator at the start of the game. All companies

have their factories located in the country and cannot relocate their factory during the

course of the game.

There are three aspects to consider when producing ice-cream Plant capacity, Labor

and Raw Materials.

Theplant capacity is reflected in the number of plant units; The labor available is reflected by the number of labor units (10 units = 1 person).

The requirements for producing 1 tub of ice-cream are:

o 1 unit of planto 0.1 unit of laboro Raw materials (varies for different flavors)

Raw materialrequirements for:o Chocolate Flavor

0.55 units of milk 0.45 units of cocoa

o Vanilla Flavor 0.6 units of milk 0.4 units of vanilla

o Strawberry Flavor 0.6 units of milk 0.4 units of strawberries


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1) Plant: Buy/Sell- You can make decisions on how much ice-cream to produce,but do take note of your existing plant capacity, labor and raw materials available.You will not be able to produce more ice-cream than the resources currently

available.

2) Labor: Hire/Fire - You can also decide to expand production by buying moreplant units and hiring more labor, or reduce costs by selling off plant units and

firing labor. Please note that these transactions will incur a certain cost. The cost

information can be found clicking on the buttons on the Production panel.

3) R&D Expenditure - Spending on Product R&D will go towards improving thequality of your ice-cream, as well as towards reducing your overall cost ofproduction.

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3)

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You can view information about stocks, products, plant info, labor info and maintenance

info by clicking respective buttons at the upper right corner. The quality of ice-cream

produced is also affected by the quality of raw materials used. To purchase raw materialsand view your existing stocks, click on the View Warehouse button.

View StockButton

View Products

Button

View Warehouse

Button

Plant Info

Button

Labor Info

Button

Maintenance Info

Button


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View Stocks

The View Stocks screen displays the existing unsold ice-cream your company has. In Ice-

cream Factory, manufactured ice-cream will be discarded after 2 months. This means thatice-cream that is 1 month old, if not sold during this month, will be discarded. When

satisfying customers demands, the existing stocks will be sold first, then followed by theice-cream produced this month.

1) Existing ice-cream stocks - In this table, the manufactured ice-cream is displayedaccording to flavour. Each flavour has two durations (current or 1 month old) andits respective availability of stock is displayed.

2) Existing ingredient stocks - The four ingredients, cocoa, vanilla, strawberry andmilk, are shown with their respective qualities and quantities of stock available.

3) View production - To return to the main production page, click on the ViewProduction button.

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Warehouse

The warehouse screen displays the existing unused raw materials. There are various inputfields available to purchase raw materials for producing ice-cream.

For this game, raw materials can be kept indefinitely. Any additional raw materials

bought will be stored together with the existing raw material stocks. Although you may

store as much stocks as you wish, there is a warehousing cost for storing ice-cream andraw materials. The costs are per unit of stock/raw material, so the larger your inventory,

the higher your warehousing costs.

1) Existing ingredient stocks - The four ingredients, cocoa, vanilla, strawberry andmilk, are shown with their respective qualities and quantities of stock available.

2)Ingredients - You can buy any of the four ingredients from the suppliersavailable. Please note that each supplier sells the same ingredient at different

prices and qualities. Higher quality ingredients cost more than lower quality

ingredients of the same kind.

3) Purchase - Click on the ingredient you would like to purchase in theIngredientstable. The screen is now updated with the name, price and quality of that

ingredient. Key in a number to indicate the units of ingredients you would like topurchase. To purchase multiple ingredients, you may click on another ingredient

and key in the number. The entered values will be retained while you are buying

different ingredients.

4) View production - To return to the main production page, click on the ViewProduction button.

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5.FINANCE

The Finance screen is generally used to take out loans or pay off loans. It also displays a

summary of your current expenditures and remaining cash that your company has. If youare currently spending more than your available cash, you will have to either reduce your

expenditure or take out a loan. If not, the simulation will automatically take out anemergency loan for your company, which is at a much higher rate than the normal loan

rate.

In this page, you do not need to make any decisions.

Finance Info

It contains two pieces of information,tax rate and investment rate. Tax rate is used in

the PNL report (Accounting report); it specifies how much tax your company needs topay on the company profit.Investment rate is the rate of return for the investment ofyour extra cash. This only applies if you have positive cash at the end of each period.

View Loans

There are two types of loans. The emergency loans are taken out by system, while the

normal loans can be taken out to meet at any time. However, there is a maximum loanamount for each period, which can be found clicking View Loans Taken button.


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View

Loans

Button


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5.REPORTSAfter each simulation run, reports will be generated for every company. These reports

will give you an indication of how well the company has done. You may choose to view

any of the past reports.

This is a summary of the information available in each report:

1) Accounts Report - Displays revenues, expense breakdown and profits.2) Sales Report Displays sales in each country, dissatisfied customers and Brand

image.a. Additional Sales are sales that are obtained when your competitors could

not meet the demand. This will only occur if you have additional unsold

stocks.

b. Dissatisfied customers are customers who wanted to buy your companysice-cream but could not do so due to lack of supply.c. There are fiveBrandindicators, from lowest to highest: bad, unknown,

common, trusted and exclusive.

3) Production Report Displays your production as a whole. It has foursubsections:

a. Unit Produced it shows the total units your company has produced foreach flavor in the past period.

b. Cost Analysis it includes the fixed costs and variable costs. The variablecosts, in this game, are captured as the total production cost, which can be

further split into unit production costs.c. Capacity Analysis it contains the information about how large your plant

is and how much labor there is in your plant.

Plants will depreciate, and the normal plant depreciation rate can be found

in the Maintenance Info panel of the Production page. To slow down thedepreciation rate, your company should spend money in maintenance in

each period.

Labor information is calculated using the following simple equation:

Labor (units) = Number of Workers Units Produced per worker.

The number of ice-creams that 1 labor unit can produced can be inferredfrom the Labor info panel of the Production page.

d. Stock Analysis Amount of produced ice cream and raw materials in yourwarehouse.

4) Decision Report Displays a summary of your past decisions.


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6. CONTACT INFORMATIONThank you for participating in the Ice-cream Factory Simulation game! We hope that

you have found it enjoyable and useful.

If you have any problem accessing the game website, please do not hesitate to call us at

(65) 6874-1368 or send an email to [email protected] .

If you want to leave a comment on the game for future improvement, please send anemail to [email protected] . Thank you for spending time with us! We

hope you had fun in playing the Ice-cream Factory game!

Icecream Userguide

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