Foodcorp

Foodcorp simulation exercise was a great experience for me. I acted out a role of Vice President of Dry Goods. As a preparation for the simulation, each member of the team has received a booklet of in and outbound memos that an actual officer would collect in the real world. The first part described Foodcorp and its business. The second (the actual memos) helped us familiarize ourselves with the problems Foodcorp is facing. Problems were many and multifaceted. Some were minor such as tightening up safety protocols at the manufacturing plants. Major problems included such fundamentals as facing the competition or outlining a business directive for the years to come. The goal of this exercise was to simulate how officers of a corporation such Foodcorp would deal with such problems.

Our team (second presenter) has noted what we’ve learned about Groups and Teams and applied it to the way we prepared for the simulation. That is, among others things, we’ve identified the leaders and scheduled face-to-face meetings. We have also set up a system that would allow for alternate means of communication. Email was an obvious choice but we felt it was restricted, so we agreed to set up a forum (similar to Blackboard) where we could all participate and share ideas. These methods proved very helpful.

The first step was to evaluate the current structure of the Foodcorp’s chain of command. We thought it was a very important step as it may solve a few of the problems we’ve faced. For example, authority and decision making would shift among departments thereby leading to a more productive way we operate. Furthermore, there was an issue of bribes being given to certain officers of the organization. We felt that by reorganizing we could enforce stricter control over the decisions carried out.

The second step was to meet in specific groups and work out the problems pertaining to each segment of the organization. There were three people in Dry Goods group. Myself, Tracy and Marina. Each one of us has taken upon ourselves to think about and come up with solutions to the problems Dry Goods faced. Once that was done, we met and discussed them all at length. Because we only had twenty minutes to carry out the simulation, we were forced to choose only those problems that we’ve felt are the most pressing (e.g. implementation of Management Information