Highlights of the LINKS Global SCM Competition:

There are now nine LINKS white papers:

1. “Best-Practice Teaching With Business Simulations”
2. “Extreme Customization With LINKS Simulations”
3. “Practice Rounds in LINKS Events”
4. “Adding Ethical Dilemmas To LINKS Events”
5. “Individual Performance Assessment in Business Simulations”
6. “Designing Effective LINKS-Based Courses: Required, Recommended, and Optional Elements”
7. “Advice To My LINKS Successor”
8. “Coaching Throughout the Business Simulation Lifecycle”
9. “Planning and Executing Effective Presidential Review Meetings”

About the LINKS Service Quality Management Simulation:

Direct Links to the LINKing UP Interview and The Professor's Column in the July 2010 LINKS Newsletter:

There are now eight LINKS white papers:

1. “Best-Practice Teaching With Business Simulations”
2. “Extreme Customization With LINKS Simulations”
3. “Practice Rounds in LINKS Events”
4. “Adding Ethical Dilemmas To LINKS Events”
5. “Individual Performance Assessment in Business Simulations”
6. “Designing Effective LINKS-Based Courses: Required, Recommended, and Optional Elements”
7. “Advice To My LINKS Successor”
8. “Coaching Throughout the Business Simulation Lifecycle”

Direct Links to the LINKing UP Interview and The Professor's Column in the June 2010 LINKS Newsletter:

Direct Link to the LINKing UP Interview in the May 2010 LINKS Newsletter:

Volume discounts now exist for all raw materials and sub-assembly components procurements in the xLINKS Enterprise Management Simulation [Extreme Edition], the LINKS Marketing Strategy Simulation, and the xLINKS Marketing Strategy Simulation [Extreme Edition].

Direct Link to the LINKing UP Interview in the April 2010 LINKS Newsletter:

Instructor Hall of Fame membership reflects recognition, respect, and thanks accorded long-time (5+ years) LINKS instructors for their interest in, support of, and commitment to the LINKS Simulations. Along with LINKS Hall of Fame enshrinement, the title “LINKS Fellow” is bestowed on these distinguished LINKS supporters.

Direct Links to The Professor's Columns in the March 2010 LINKS Newsletter:

Direct Links to the LINKing UP Interview and The Professor's Columns in the February 2010 LINKS Newsletter:

There are now seven LINKS white papers:

1. “Best-Practice Teaching With Business Simulations”
2. “Extreme Customization With LINKS Simulations”
3. “Practice Rounds in LINKS Events”
4. “Adding Ethical Dilemmas To LINKS Events”
5. “Individual Performance Assessment in Business Simulations”
6. “Designing Effective LINKS-Based Courses: Required, Recommended, and Optional Elements”
7. “Advice To My LINKS Successor”

Direct Links to the LINKing UP Interview and The Professor's Columns in the January 2010 LINKS Newsletter:

These LINKS simulations test questions are provided to LINKS instructors in Word doc format to facilitate use throughout LINKS events. LINKS instructors may freely use these questions for testing or for in-class discussion purposes by appropriate cutting-and-pasting from this Word doc file.

Direct Links To LINKing UP Interview and The Professor's Column in the December 2009 LINKS Newsletter:

LINKS marketing simulations now span the “small-medium-large” within-course simulation “footprint”-spectrum for courses at all degree-program levels.

In addition, the specialized LINKS marketing simulations

Full details about the LINKS Marketing Simulation are accessible via the LINKS website.

Randy Chapman (Chapman@LINKS-simulations.com), the LINKS author, welcomes the opportunity to converse with LINKS instructors to provide assistance in selecting the most appropriate LINKS simulations variant for courses of all types, lengths, and levels.

Instructor Hall of Fame membership reflects recognition, respect, and thanks accorded long-time (5+ years) LINKS instructors for their interest in, support of, and commitment to the LINKS Simulations. Along with LINKS Hall of Fame enshrinement, the title “LINKS Fellow” is bestowed on these distinguished LINKS supporters.

Thanks to Jeff Thieme (University of Memphis) for suggesting this usability enhancement.

The LINKS website is hosted by a commercial web-hosting service on a shared server. Server traffic on the other sites hosted on the LINKS server can occasionally slow access to LINKS. And, more generally, server traffic can be congested at any particular point in time due to internet-wide load factors. If you encounter an apparent server outage when you attempt to access LINKS, please try again later (say an hour later). Past experience with the hosting service is that server outages are usually of relatively short duration. We continue to be pleased with the performance of our web-server host, 1&1 Internet Inc. Our experience is that the LINKS web-server is “up” 99%+ of the time, which is certainly an excellent performance level. Of course, this still implies that there will be occasional outages of, perhaps, an hour or so per week.

To provide additional visibility and convenient access to the Bulletin, a link has been added to the initial webpage in the LINKS Simulation Database.

These KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are also reported in a firm's supplementary Excel results file, accessible via the LINKS Simulation Database. The KPIs worksheet includes charts with firm, industry-worst, industry-average, and industry-best results for each of the last six rounds for each KPI.

Access the evolving LINKS Instructor Resources via the LINKS webpage.

“When a firm loses money, do taxes still exist?”

These help pop-ups will be especially useful for LINKS participants in the early stages of LINKS events. These help pop-ups provide useful top-line advice and tips about an input web-screen.

Pop-ups must be be enabled in your web browser to access these help pop-up windows.

For all new LINKS industries initialized after June 1, 2009, the KPI charts are no longer provided in the Word doc results file. And, the LINKS manuals (updated June 3, 2009) include no mention of these KPI charts in the Word doc results file.

The Excel supplementary results spreadsheet has been substantially enhanced. In addition to the financial and operating results worksheet and the decision history worksheet in the Excel supplementary results spreadsheet:

“One group of students said they missed the first round (i.e., forget to input the decisions). Can they still make some changes in their inputs after the game run has been executed?”

Volume discounts now exist for all raw materials and sub-assembly components for regular procurements, excluding emergency procurements, in the LINKS Supply Chain Management Simulations.

“What relationships should exist between retail-channel prices and direct-channel prices? For example, should direct-channel prices always be less than retail-channel prices?”

It's difficult know whether the comparable final end-user prices for set-top box products in channel #1 and in direct channels are predictable as to which would be relatively higher or lower. It seems reasonable to expect that retailers would observe brand-comparable prices in competitive direct channels in their region and would not feel positively inclined toward manufacturers who undercut retailers’ prices in a direct channel.

“We ordered many research studies before the last round’s input deadline, but only a few of them have been included in our Word doc output file. Where are the results of the missing research studies?”

You may wish to review the “Audit Trace” to see the inputs processed before the last round (i.e., the input changes that your firm made and submitted to the LINKS Simulation Database for the last round). Click on the “Display Audit Trace Logfile” button in the LINKS Simulation Database, on the first web-screen after you log-in to the LINKS Simulation Database with your LINKS firm’s passcode.

The Forecasting Accuracy Report includes: detailed brand-market forecasting accuracy results for all short-term sales volume forecasts detailed gross margin and long-term sales volume forecasting accuracy results, for those LINKS variants that include these forecasts an overall summary of forecasting accuracy for all forecasts a detailed sales history (for the last six rounds) of brand-market sales volume.

            Product-Specific              Product Product
            Forecasting Accuracy  Overall   5-1     5-2
            --------------------  ------- ------- -------
            Forecasting Accuracy    80.1%   77.1%   83.2%
            Number of Forecasts        12       6       6


            Region-Specific                Region  Region  Region
            Forecasting Accuracy  Overall     1       2       3
            --------------------  -------  ------  ------  ------
            Forecasting Accuracy    80.1%   74.4%   78.6%   87.4%
            Number of Forecasts        12       4       4       4
          

Brand- and region-specific forecasting accuracy summaries provide potential insights into patterns of forecasting accuracy and inaccuracy. For example, in the sample results reported above, the relatively low forecasting accuracies for product 1 and region 1 stand-out and merit further attention and analysis. Similarly, there is lots of learning, knowledge transfer, and process improvement potential associated with determining why region 3’s forecasting accuracy is highest in these sample results.

Repositioning the LINKS Multi-Channel Management Simulation: On-going user feedback has resulted in a repositioning of the LINKS Multi-Channel Management Simulation to improve its fit for channels management courses where a "modest" competitive management simulation emphasis is appropriate. The LINKS Multi-Channel Management Simulation emphasizes marketing mix analysis, strategy, and tactics in the management of a portfolio of branded and private-label products across retail, direct/e-commerce, and major accounts channels: pricing strategy and tactics distribution network design and management supply and outbound logistics management (including outbound transportation management) marketing support management (marketing spending, communications positioning, promotional strategy and tactics, and sales force management)

In this simulation repositioning, product development decisions, research studies related to product design/development, and service insourcing decisions have been eliminated.

LINKS participants may wish to download the appropriate Excel exhibits spreadsheet for their particular LINKS event so that it may be conveniently accessed on a local personal computer. Of course, Excel exhibits spreadsheets are always accessible via the LINKS website.

The typical range of surface delivery rates for in-bound sub-assembly component procurements and outbound finished goods shipments is expressed in “±” form. For example, “80% ± 8%” reflects an average surface delivery rate of 80% within the current month with a typical range for that average being 72% to 88%. This change in surface delivery reliability is now included in the LINKS Supply Chain Management Fundamentals Simulation, the LINKS Supply Chain Management Simulation, and the LINKS Supply Chain Management Simulation [Extended Edition].

Research Study #28 (Marketing Program Experiment) Updates:

Research Study #28 (Marketing Program Experiment) has been enhanced to automatically include three experiments for each RS#28 input set. Research Study #28 now includes experiments with the specified marketing spending input plus additional experiments with 50% more and 50% less than the specified marketing spending input. These three experiments are included at the standard cost of Research Study #28.

LINKS Services Versions Updates: Research Study #28 has been added to the research study resources in the LINKS Services Management Simulation and the LINKS Services Marketing Simulation to provide access to a powerful experimental research study to permit detailed study/analysis of the drivers of customer perceptions. Research Study #34 (Accessibility Perception Drivers) has been added to the LINKS Services Management Simulation and to the LINKS Services Marketing Simulation to provide additional research resources to access effective/efficient drivers of perceptions of support services. Service design element “Service Appointment Schedule” now has indirect cost implications for CSR productivity. To provide sufficient standby/reserve CSR capacity to service shorter Service Appointment Scheduling programs, available CSR service time is reduced by 1.5(7-SAS)(7-SAS) hours per quarter where “SAS” is the Service Appointment Scheduling level associated with a support service. A new “Service Center Statistics Report” is included in the standard financial and operating reports. The Service Center Statistics Report provides categorized service center call counts of callers’ questions for each of your firm’s services in each market region. Service center call counts are reported for these ten categories: billings, design configuration, design quality, first-time usage, introduction (service introductions to market regions), miscellaneous, service call duration, service experience, service scheduling, and unfilled orders. Where a single caller has several questions, the call is recorded in multiple categories. Thus, these “call counts” are really “question counts” rather than counts of caller calls. LINKS firms outsource service center management to a reputable provider/vendor in each market region in which your firm operates. Firms pay the outsourced service center $6 for each call received. These costs are recorded as “Call Center Service” on a firm’s financial statements.

The audit trace logfile is accessible via the “Display Audit Trace Logfile” button on the opening webpage in the LINKS Simulation Database (i.e., on the webpage that appears after the successful input of a firm’s passcode).

Normally, there’s no particular need to access the LINKS audit trace logfile since all current inputs are accessible via the various web input screens within the LINKS Simulation Database. However, the audit trace logfile is useful for resolving questions relating to verifying a particular input change’s timing. And, sometimes questions arise regarding the possibility that multiple team members were simultaneously making input changes within the LINKS Simulation Database … a definite “no-no”, as per warnings in the LINKS manual and e-mail reminders that all LINKS students receive during their LINKS events.

The LINKS Services Operations Management Simulation is targeted at elective services operations management courses and introductory operations management courses where a medium-sized, 5-6 round, team-based, competitive simulation event is of interest.

Learning emphases in the LINKS Services Operations Management Simulation include:

The LINKS Services Operations Management Simulation is a sophisticated, competitive, team-based services operations management simulation. LINKS firms market and deliver “support services” (e.g., computing/IT support, financial management, health care, repair, or maintenance services) to households (consumers) and major accounts (businesses) in multiple market regions.

More information about the LINKS Services Operations Management Simulation (including the complete student manual) is accessible via the LINKS website. Accessing the “Which?” link on the LINKS website provides comparative information about the three LINKS services management simulation variants (marketing, operations management, and full-scale services management).

The LINKS author, Randy Chapman (Chapman@LINKS-simulations.com), would be pleased to converse with services, operations management, and supply chain management faculty who’d like to chat about the LINKS Services Operations Management Simulation.

To better position the LINKS Enterprise Management Simulation as an entry-level business simulation and to reduce its “size” (scope) a notch, the repositioned LINKS Enterprise Management Simulation includes a slightly reduced decision set (credit financing, supplemental dividends, and loans decisions have been eliminated), a single sales channel (“retail”) in each market region, and a slimmed-down set of research studies (research study #25 has been deleted).

With these reductions in simulation “size” (scope), the LINKS Enterprise Management Simulation now has the potential to involve 1.25-hour decision rounds (although the initial decision round should be longer, to account for initial startup time-cost issues). And, as before, the LINKS Enterprise Management Simulation can be scheduled as a four-round event, although five-six rounds are generally recommended. Thus, the repositioned LINKS Enterprise Management Simulation provides a rich, competitive management simulation experience but in a relatively small time-footprint in an academic degree-granting course or executive education seminar.

A comparison of the three LINKS enterprise management simulation variants is accessible via this link: Enterprise Management Simulation Variants

LINKS FAQs are an initial information source for students and instructors with LINKS questions. And, since the FAQs have been developed over time based on prior students’ and instructors’ queries, they naturally reflect common and not-so-common user questions.

To access the LINKS FAQs for a particular LINKS simulation, access the LINKS simulation variant from the main LINKS webpage. The FAQs link is in the LINKS Resources section on the variant-specific webpage.

The LINKS FAQs have been re-engineered to improve accessibility and usability. For example, in each FAQs category, the full set of category FAQs are displayed in a lengthy web-screen display to permit convenient printing of a category of FAQs. To facilitate access, FAQs are routinely cross-listed in multiple categories. In addition, there is more cross-listing of individual FAQs in relevant FAQs categories. And, all LINKS FAQs have been refreshed to fully reflect the current status of each LINKS variant.