What is a case ?

Metamodeling is very important part of design developing software in the all steps. Testing, in one's turn, is a hard but necessary part in completing of developing.. This article describes analysis of object-oriented metrics, some of them are suggested to include in Together Borland CASE-system to reduce general (end) testing.


Your cases
You will find all your custom cases listed in chronological order under "Your cases".There are also four options to choose from next to each case: Setting, Edit parameters, Delete and Copy.
 Settings option opens up a settings panel that includes the following options: custom case name, case description, sharing option, available languages and custom description file upload. Edit parameters link launches the parameter editor, which is covered extensively in further chapters. Delete function allows you to delete the custom case. Copy function allows you to create an exact copy of a desired custom case if you want to use your old custom case as a template for further changes.

Shared cases
You can share the custom cases that you have created with all Cesim instructors that have registered into our platform, and you can take a copy for yourself from any of the custom cases that other instructors have shared with everyone.
You can share a case by clicking "Settings" under "Your cases" in case management.This opens up a pop-up window that includes a checkbox for sharing your case.Select "Shared" and save your settings to share your new case with everyone.
All shared cases appear in a list under "Shared cases" The list includes the name of the case, short description, creator name and the copy control, which you can use to copy the shared case for yourself to be used as is or further refined by you.Changes to the original copy of the shared case do not have any effect on your account after you have copied the case to yourself.

Cesim cases
In addition to shared cases, there are also highlighted Cesim cases.Depending on the particular business simulation game, Cesim offers several pre-defined Cesim created and supported business cases to choose from.These are available for all instructors through the course creation or later through case management.They are clearly highlighted in the list of available cases for each course.

Assign custom cases to courses and universes
Once you have created a custom case, you can assign it to your course or universe within a course by clicking "Assign" from the sidebar.This opens up the following view: The "Assign" page includes a familiar course list in the sidebar and course details appear on the top right.Below the course details, you will find details about the currently assigned case.All simulation courses have a case assigned to them; by default, it is the default Cesim case.
The case information box includes details about the case name and description, simulation type, inclusion of a custom case description and available languages.If the case includes a case description file, you can download it from here.The assigned case can be changed by clicking "Change" at the bottom left corner of the information box.This opens up the following pop-up window: The case change window includes the same case details as in the previous phase, and in addition to the details, a select box at the top left corner for changing the case.The select box includes a selection of available Cesim cases and your own custom cases, including the ones you may have copied from shared cases.
It is also possible to assign different cases to separate universes.This option is available at the bottom of the "Assign" page.
You can assign custom cases to universes by clicking the green button or return to using the custom case assigned to the course by clicking the red button.The case assigned to the universe is highlighted under "Case".In case there is no custom case highlighted, the particular universe is using the custom case assigned to the entire course.

Editing a custom case
If you wish to edit your custom case, click "Edit parameters" next to the set you want to modify under "Your cases".This will in most cases take you to Outlooks page where you can pick any of the languages available in the simulation to modify market outlooks.Next to the Outlooks tab you will find several business function categorized tabs under which you'll find relevant parameters that form the business case of your simulation exercise.
When editing a custom case, note that most of the parameter inputs are validated against minimum and maximum limits.All of your changes are saved as you make them and there is no ability to go back to the previous value, so be careful when making changes.
Some of the parameter changes are immediately reflected everywhere in the game, but this does not apply to all parameters, so if you wish to make changes to your case during the course, it is recommended to do so with at least one round advance.Remember also that you should reinitialize your course if you wish to affect the initial situation in any way.
Be also aware of the fact that although some parameter changes are technically possible to make, it does not mean that they make up a good business case or are reflective of an actual real world market place.
It is important to note that changes to parameters are currently not automatically reflected in market outlooks.Market outlooks are supposed to give a rough description of how the case evolves and as such should be in sync with the parameters.
Please note that changes to custom names and currencies will be immediately reflected on all of the pages.For example, in Global Challenge, Finance and logistics page might show tariffs per unit in Australian dollars for all transports from Australia to Japan instead of showing the same in US dollars for all transports from US to Asia.Moreover, some parameter inputs might be grayed out based on what modules are currently activated.
All parameter edit pages allow you to change the number of rounds that are displayed.This decision is common across all pages and affects both parameter input cell visibility and graphical presentation.The purpose of this is to lessen the amount of clutter on the page in case all the rounds are not relevant for your purpose.
Although all of our simulations follow a similar structure when it comes to case management, there are notable differences.In the next chapter, we will introduce you to the process of creating a custom case specifically for the international business and strategy simulation Cesim Global Challenge.

Excel download / upload functionality
This feature is currently not available to Cesim instructors directly.
The Cesim Instructor platform allows for seamless downloading and uploading of all parameters and market outlook texts between Microsoft Excel workbooks and the Cesim Instructor platform case management tool.We have created purpose built Excel templates for all our business simulations for editing the entire custom case in Excel and uploading all the changes back onto our servers with the click of a button.The Excel template and the case management tool can be used as complementary ways of editing your custom case.You can create a case in case management, download it to Excel for heavy editing, upload back onto our servers and continue making final changes before assigning it for your course.We hope to bring this functionality to all Cesim instructors in the future.

Global Challenge custom case creation
Best practices with Cesim Global Challenge A good case is transparent to participants.In other words, teams who engage themselves in analyzing the market outlooks and previous rounds' results and make well justified decisions based on their analysis, also succeed in the game.A good case is built to support and target desired learning outcomes.
On the other hand, you should not create a case where parameters incentivize contradictory decision-making; you should not for example decrease demand while increasing advertising elasticity in a given market.The case is supposed to force teams to carefully analyze the situation and give them some gratification upon recognizing leading trends.
Custom case creation can be approached from a top-down or bottom-up perspective.In the former, you will start developing an overall storyline for the simulation exercise in broad strokes.You might write down the key changes you would like to see in each round, make changes to market outlooks and then seek to have these changes be reflected in all the relevant parameters.
A rough sketch for a new storyline including 7 rounds and weak economic conditions might be something like this: When the basic storyline is described in the outlooks, you can start adding twists in between to highlight different areas of your choice.It is also possible to add surprising and remarkable events to the outlooks.With different events you can force teams to adjust their strategy in their decision-making.Finally, you can start to build accurate parameter changes for every round.Familiarize yourself with the parameters available in the case management tool and start working on numerical changes for every round.
You might also take a more bottom-up approach to custom case creation.A good way to start experimenting with Cesim case management is to identify few key parameters that would alter the basic dynamic of the simulation exercise a bit after using the simulation for few times.This is of course not necessary, and we are happy to give advice on how to immerse yourself into the practice of creating great custom cases that achieve your course learning targets.

Outlooks
Available languages:

Editing outlooks
Global Challenge outlooks are edited by first choosing the desired language.Secondly, the instructor must select custom outlooks into use from the top right corner of the page.
Once that is done, the market outlook texts that appear in the editable boxes will be the ones used by the simulation.
The market outlook edit view includes Global Challenge outlooks divided into three sections: demand, costs and finance.The original market outlook text will always be available for reference on the page along with the editable text boxes at the bottom of the page.There are 12 market outlooks, one for each round and these are changed from the top left corner of the page from the round number selector.
Remember that if you wish to use multiple languages all respective languages must be modified to use your desired custom market outlooks.By default, other languages will continue to use their respective default market outlooks.

Demand and marketing
Demand and marketing page contains parameters affecting demand formation, competitive elements and marketing efforts.

Basic demand
For round 0 (the starting situation for your students), you can decide the amount of basic demand per team in thousands of units.From round 1 onwards, you can set the percentage growth (+) or decline (-) of the basic demand on sequential or round-on-round basis.
Basic demand per team is further influenced by pricing, advertising, number of features and several other factors before the team specific final demand is determined.
 Market area 1 (2000 K units, growth rates between -3% and 20%)  Market area 2 (2006 K units, growth rates between -7% and 41%)  Market area 3 (1739 K units, growth rates between -15% and 15%) Total demand in the market also varies depending on teams' decisions.If teams have invested significantly into advertising and average prices have been heading lower, the total market size expands and vice versa.
A good case might include different starting levels and growth rates for each market with noticeable differences to force teams to team prioritize the market areas and possible adjust their strategies in the middle of the game.
The graph in the case management tool shows the big picture for basic demand in each market.

Network coverage
Network coverage is an index telling you how widespread each technology is on a given round.If network coverage is set as zero, there are no sales for it.You might consider evolutionary trends for different network technologies or you might choose to set them to be more direct competitors.Note that the simulation does not structurally consider the different technologies to depend on each other, so you may freely change the coverage parameters.You can also change the names of the technologies under Custom texts.
Please, also consider changes to development and licensing costs, available features, production costs and other parameters in case you consider significant changes.
Students can observe these parameter values on the demand page in network coverage forecasts charts.
Market area 1

Price elasticity
Elasticity is a measure of a relative impact of a factor to a relative outcome.It is measured as a percentage difference in the explainable variable (often "quantity demanded") divided by the percentage difference in the explaining variable (such as price, advertising etc.).
The higher the absolute value of elasticity is, the higher the effect of price difference on demand is.Note that the price elasticity has to be negative.The absolute value should be higher than 1 and smaller than 6.With values smaller than 1, teams would always benefit more from increasing price than what is the effect of price increase on demand.
If the price elasticity is set at -3, 10 per cent difference in price will lead to a 30 per cent difference in demand provided that all other demand factors are excluded.The behavior of price elasticity can be misinterpreted if one does not take into account the general change in price level.If a team reduces pricing by 5 per cent but the overall prices decline by 10 per cent, the specific team will indeed lose demand.
The price sensitivity is set separately for each market area.It is recommended that there is a difference in price sensitivity between the market areas.

Advertising elasticity
Advertising elasticity should always be positive, because higher advertising always leads to higher demand no matter how small the effect might be.A higher promotion elasticity will increase the effect product promotion has on consumers, and differences in demand due to promotion will grow.Elasticity of 0.1 means a 10% difference in promotion effort would cause a 1% difference in the demand.Advertising elasticity is set separately for each market area and it should be in the range of 0.05 to 0.3.

Number of features elasticity
These parameters determine how much customers appreciate additional features in products.If you set the elasticity to be higher, it'll increase the effect of having more features than competitors.This figure needs to be positive, so that offering more features always increases demand.The number of features elasticity is set separately for each market area.

Technology attractiveness
Technology attractiveness measures the relative appeal of products.What matters, is the relative rates of Tech 1, 2, 3 and 4 within a single market.For example, if Tech 2 attractiveness multiplier is two times higher than Tech 1 attractiveness multiplier in the US, then Tech 2 is two times more popular than Tech 1 in the US given otherwise similar properties.You can use the attractiveness parameter to create interesting twists in the game.Remember to write about changes in attractiveness to market outlooks.Attractiveness parameters are set separately for each technology in each market area.
Market area 1

Cumulative part of advertising
The share of advertising investment that remains effective on the next round.For example, a value of 50 per cent means that out of an investment of 1000 units of advertising expenditure on round 1, 500 units continue to affect the demand on the second round, and only 500 additional units of expenditure are required to achieve the same effect as on round 1.The advertising residual parameter is set separately for total company advertising and technology specific advertising.

Last round's market share elasticity
Last round's market share elasticity dictates the extent to which differences in last round's market share affect differences in team specific demand on the current round.Note, that this creates an effect where it is increasingly harder for weak teams to contest those who succeed at first.Last round's market share elasticity parameters are set separately for each market area.A value close to 0.2 is appropriate.

Technology market share elasticity
Technology market share elasticity dictates the extent to which differences in technology market share affects differences in team specific demand.These parameters are set separately for each market area.A value close to 0.1 is appropriate.Note also that since there are two different market share related demand factors there combined effect might become too high.

Cross elasticity multiplier
Cross elasticity multiplier affects situations where a team is offering two different products in the same market.Lower figure creates larger impact.For example, a value of 1 means that cross elasticity has no impact.High cross elasticity leads to lower combined demand for teams that have products with significantly differing market demand before considering the cross elasticity impact.These parameters are set separately for each market area.

Technology advertising elasticity
Tech advertising elasticity dictates the extent to which differences in total technology specific advertising (advertising for products of the same technology) affects differences in team specific demand.These parameters are set separately for each market area.
 Market area 1 (0.17)  Market area 2 (0.08)  Market area 3 (0.12) Global multipliers These parameters affect the formation of total demand for each technology.For example, average pricing determines how strongly total demand is affected by deviations from customers' standard price perceptions.

Total technology market price elasticity
These parameters dictate the impact of average pricing on the total market demand for a certain technology among the technologies that are available in the marketplace.The price elasticity parameters should be negative, and they are set separately for each market area.

Basic in-house production unit cost
Basic production unit cost acts as a base for the actual unit cost.It is then multiplied by economies of scale, planning penalty and learning curve multipliers when the actual production unit cost is calculated.These parameters should reflect other issues that might affect production unit costs in the real world.Note that the learning curve multiplier effect in the default case is quite large and can decrease the cost around 20% already in the beginning.Therefore, set the production basic cost higher than what you would like the actual production cost to be.Production unit costs are set separately for all technologies in the first two market areas (third market area does not have production).

Economies of scale
You can set the economies of scale level to 1-10, where 1 indicates a low effect and 10 a high effect.Economies of scale parameter in Global Challenge is the effect that capacity utilization rate has on the production unit cost.It is the same multiplier for both market areas that have production.There is a graph in the case management tool that shows the multiplier with different capacity utilization ratios.For example, if the graph shows that the unit cost multiplier is 0.98 at 80% capacity utilization, then the unit cost is multiplied by 0.98.

Planning penalty
Planning penalty refers to how much the allocated production decision differs from actual production.Planning error is interpreted so that every time the actual demand for a team has been smaller than their production decision, the team's production unit cost is multiplied by a multiplier that is higher than 1.Please note that production is never scaled upwards, and that planning penalty does not apply to courses that use finished goods inventories.There is a graph in the case management that shows the unit cost multiplier at different planning error levels.

Learning curve
Producing a technology will decrease its production cost over time.Here you can decide the level of the learning curve effect between pre-determined levels 1 and 10.The graph in the case management tool shows the multiplier by which the unit cost is multiplied at different cumulative production amounts.Note that the learning curve effect is technology specific.High learning curve effect incentivizes low pricing strategies and can lead to fierce initial price competition.

Scrap rate
Scrap rate is the share of production that goes to waste and cannot be sold to customers.Teams pay the production costs for the scrapped products.Scrap rate is set separate for both market areas that can have production.

Maximum outsourcing limits
These parameters dictate the maximum amount of contract manufacturing per team in thousand units.You can set both minimum and maximum limits for maximum outsourcing.
The amount of products available for allocation to contract manufacturing depends on the cumulative allocated amount.Thus, the more teams decide to outsource in previous rounds, the more contract manufacturing capacity they have available later on.The parameters are set for both market areas that can have production.
Maximum cannot be more than  Market area 1 (2000 K units)  Market area 2 (2000 K units) Maximum cannot be below  Market area 1 (1000 K units)  Market area 2 (1000 K units)

Basic outsourcing costs
This is the basic unit cost of contract manufacturing in base currency.A volume discount multiplier is used to arrive at the final unit cost of outsourcing.Outsourcing costs are set separately for each technology in both market areas that can have production.Note that outsourcing is available from the second market area even if it does not have production facilities.

Volume discounts
Volume discounts affect the extent to which effective outsourcing costs are affected by cumulative outsourcing orders.With outsourcing, the more you order, the lower prices you get.

Initial number of own production facilities
Here you can determine the amount of production facilities available in the beginning of the simulation.Please consider this together with production plant capacity parameters, outsourcing capacity and total demand growth.Also, remember that overcapacity cannot be divested in Global Challenge.Moreover, any changes should probably be reflected in balance sheet values that are available for adjustment under the Finance and logistics page.

Production plant capacity per round
These parameters dictate the total production capacity of each production plant per round in thousands of units.

Feature cost
Feature costs are added directly to product unit costs based on the number of features that are offered.For example, if a product has 6 features and the feature cost is 10 US dollars, out of the total unit cost of the product 60 US dollars are directly dependent on feature costs.These parameters are set separately for each market area as features are added to the product in each market area separately and not in production.

Inventory cost
Inventory costs can be set to be dependent on both stored units and a fixed cost, and separately for both production areas.Remember that you must activate the inventory module under Modules page in order to have finished goods inventories included in your course.Variable costs are set as base currency per unit whereas as fixed costs are set as thousands of units of base currency for both market areas separately.Fixed costs are incurred on every round irrespective of whether a team has any units in inventory.Variable costs are based on average storage balances.

Finance and logistics
Finance page contains all the relevant parameters detailing finance, financial management, logistics costs and market valuation.

Tariffs per unit
Tariffs parameters are set in base currency per unit.Each product that is transported across market areas is subject to tariffs according to these parameters.

Investment cost of a plant
This is the cost of building a plant in market area 1 or market area 2 in thousands units of base currency.The investment is paid one round after the investment decision.For example, if the cost for a plant in round 3 is 200 M USD, the decision to build a plant was already made in round 2. The construction delay can be set as 1 or 2 rounds on Modules page.However, the construction delay does not alter the cash flow schedule.

Foreign exchange rates (method 2)
Initial round parameter is used to set the absolute level of each currency in relation to the base currency.All subsequent parameters are annual percentage changes in the exchange rates for both currency pairs.This method enables you to preserve the exchange rate dynamics of the game if there is a need to adjust the approximate starting point of the exchange rate so that it better reflects a real world situation.EUR / USD = 1.4 means that one euro buys 1.4 US dollars.

Short-term interest rate premium
This parameter only applies to market area 1.It is added up to the long-term loan interest rate for market area 1.For instance, if long term interest in market area 1 is 5% and short term premium is 2%, then the interest rate for short term loan is 5% + 2% = 7%.Shortterm interest rate premium needs to be positive and preferably at least 1 per cent, because short-term debt is intended to be an emergency financing source in the simulation, which is tapped, when planned level of long-term debt is not enough to cover financing needs.

Long-term loan interest rates
This is a standard level for long-term loan interest rates in market area 1 and loan interest rates in general for market areas 2 and 3.It is further affected by company specific creditworthiness and short-term interest rate premium for market area 1.Interest expenses are calculated on the basis of average outstanding debt balance between opening (last round) and closing balance sheets (current round).

Company specific risk rate elasticity
This determines the sensitivity of company specific interest rate to creditworthiness.The higher the elasticity, the faster the interest rate rises for every incremental decrease in creditworthiness, which is measured with consolidated company debt to equity ratio.The elasticity should be rather large, as financial markets tend to be very sensitive.

Interest rate for cash
This is the interest rate paid to the company's cash and cash equivalents.In Global Challenge, this is simply calculated by multiplying the amount of cash on average between starting and closing balance sheets by the interest rate in each region.To illustrate, if a company holds cash reserves worth of 4 million USD on average in a region and the local interest for cash is 2%, then the company gains 80,000 USD for holding the cash in their back accounts.These interest rates are set separately for each market area.

Minimum cash reserves
These parameters set the minimum amount of cash to preserve on each balance sheet (in thousands of units of base currency for each region).In case the cash reserves fall below this amount in any of the market areas, the game automatically fills in the gap with shortterm loans in market area 1 or local long-term loans in market areas 2 and 3. Minimum cash reserves reflect the amount of money that is needed for operational activity.It is also relevant to market valuation as the amount of excess cash (cashminimum cash reserve) every team holds is added to the enterprise value.

Administration costs
Administration costs can be determined in three complementary ways: fixed cost, revenue dependent cost and production plant count based cost that can be adjusted with an elasticity parameter.Fixed costs are set in thousands of units of base currency.Variable costs are set as a fraction of total region specific revenue.These variable costs are not in use in the default case.Denotation 0.01 equals 1 per cent.Variable costs based on production plant count are set separately for both market areas that can have production and the cost can be further influenced with an elasticity parameter.

Corporate tax rates
Note that effective tax rates can deviate significantly from these official corporate tax rates due to loss carry forwards.Transfer pricing decisions can also affect the global average effective tax rate.For this reason, it is recommended that there are differences in tax rates.

Starting balance sheet, K USD
The two sides of the balance sheet do not have to balance here; the initial round will take care of that through profits, cash, receivables, payables and short-term debt.Share capital, restricted equity, retained earnings, First market area's (US by default) long-term loans and internal loans will be shown on the last round balance sheet on the initial round as determined here.Fixed assets will be shown less depreciation, and the rest of the balance sheet items will be determined by the system.
Changes to initial balance sheets are relevant for example when changing the amount of production plants in the beginning or when it is desired to create a case with significantly weaker or stronger balance sheet for the start of the simulation exercise.

Required rate of return
The required rate of return should be set higher than the average company growth rate detailed below, preferably significantly higher.This is because when determining values for cash flows, the cash flows are divided with a figure equal to required rate of return less expected growth rate (CF / (r -g)).Appropriate range for the required rate of return is from 8 per cent to 15 per cent.These parameters are used to determine the value of the company's cash flows.

Average company growth rate
The average company growth rate should be set lower than the required rate of return detailed above.These parameters are used to determine the terminal value of the company's future cash flows in market valuation calculation.

Sliding average weights of inputs
These parameters dictate the weighting of marketing and R&D related investments in business valuation.When we determine the equity value of the simulation companies, we start with providing a value for each market area business.First we calculate a measure for free cash flow.For this purpose we must deduct marketing and R&D related costs from current round revenue.Since marketing and R&D expenditures can vary significantly from round to another, we provide a way to smooth that effect over multiple rounds.We calculate weighted expenditures over three rounds.For example, if a team has spent 100, 200 and 300 units of marketing over the last three rounds, we will deduct 100 * 0.05 + 200 * 0.23 + 300 * 0.72 = 267 units from revenue on current round to determine free cash flow instead of the full 300.The same method is used for research and development expenditures.

Weight of operating cash flows in share price calculation
This parameter determines the relative importance of current round and previous round's operating cash flows in calculating the market valuation of the company.If this round parameter is set at 100 per cent, market value will be fully based on current round cash flows.

Face value of share
Face value of share affects the division of cash flows into and out of share capital and restricted equity accounts when dealing with share issues and share repurchases.When issuing new shares, the amount equal to new shares multiplied by the face value of the share is always put on share capital account, and all excess funds are put on restricted equity account.Equivalently, the share capital account is reduced by the amount equal to the repurchased shares multiplied by the face value of the share when buying back shares.

Depreciation
Depreciation of fixed assets is based on declining balance method.Depreciation rates are set separately for both market areas that can have production facilities.Setting the depreciation for example at 15 per cent means that 1000 units in fixed assets will cause 150 unit depreciation charge on the income statement on next round.

Payables and receivables
Payables are counted as percentage of production, outsourcing, feature and transportation costs, and receivables are counted as a percentage of sales.Accounts payables constitute interest free borrowing and they reduce net working capital, which then does not have to be financed externally.Accounts receivables constitute interest free lending to customers and they increase net working capital.
 Payables (3.85%)  Receivables (3.85%) Research & Development and Human resources R&D and HR page contains all parameters that are directly related to research and development function and human resources management.

In-house R&D investments required for features
For in-house research and development costs, you can set the cost for the first feature for each technology separately in thousands of units of base currency.
The cost of additional features depends on R&D elasticity parameters, parameters detailing required tech level increase and parameters that dictate the relative increase in the tech index after 100-level.The cost of an additional feature depends on previously incurred expenditures.The next feature for tech 1 for example has been approximately half developed when starting the game and when using default parameters (Tech index level 130).There are input cells for the tech index to allow for experimenting with different starting points.Inserting a value of 100 for the tech index reveals the cost of an additional feature given a new license and a value of 110 reveals the cost of the next feature if it is developed on the next round.

R&D licensing cost for features
Licensing costs for new and additional features are determined as thousands of units of base currency.

Man days available per employee per round
One round equals one year so an appropriate value for this parameter is in the range of 250.This parameter could for example be used to simulate a strike by reducing it during one round to 100 man-days.

Normal HR turnover rate
Normal turnover rate determines the share of research and development personnel that leaves the company without any associated layoff costs provided that all turnover-related factors are at a comparison level.

Wage effect on turnover
These two parameters detail wage's effect on personnel turnover.The higher the comparison level, the higher the turnover for any given level of actual wages.The higher the absolute value of the elasticity, the larger is the effect that results from actual wage differing from the comparison level.The elasticity is negative because higher wage leads to lower personnel turnover.

Training effect on turnover
These three parameters detail cumulative training's effect on personnel turnover.The higher the comparison level, the higher the turnover for any given level of actual cumulative training expenditure.The higher the absolute value of the elasticity, the larger is the effect that results from actual training differing from the comparison level.The elasticity is negative because higher cumulative training leads to lower personnel turnover.
The residual parameter determines how much of last year's expenditure continues to affect on current round.For example, value of 0.4 means that 100 unit investment on round 1 is equal in its effect on turnover to a 40 unit investment on round 2.

Utilization level effect on turnover
The research and development personnel partially determine the attractiveness of their employment by the projects they get to work on.If teams hire personnel but do not utilize them in R&D efforts, they become dissatisfied.The elasticity formula determines the extent of this effect.

Company success effect on turnover
Company success, for the purposes of turnover effect, is measured as turnover growth against average turnover growth.Companies that are gaining market share on turnover basis look more attractive in the labor market than companies who are losing market share.

Engineer layoff costs and comparison levels
These parameters detail the boundaries for different layoff costs and the associated layoff costs per person.Companies can layoff off people up to level 1 limit without cost.Level 1 cost is associated with the interval between level 1 and 2, level 2 cost is associated with the interval between level 2 and 3 and level 3 cost is associated with layoffs larger than comparison level 3.

Other HR cost parameters
Wage's share of total costs determines the additional employment costs associated with hiring an employee.For example, paying a gross wage of 4000 US dollars incurs employment costs totaling 5714 US dollars.In addition costs are incurred from recruitment, and the R&D function includes a host of other operating costs that are determined per person.

Elasticity parameters for HR and non-HR based development effort
The higher these parameters are, the more difficult it is to develop technologies and features.The first set of parameters is used with the HR module whereas the next set of parameters is used when HR has not been activated.Both sets of parameters are determined separately for each technology.
Increase in index after 100 The R&D function works through an underlying technology index.Having the technology requires a level of 100 whereas all subsequent features require an increase in the index as detailed in the next set of parameters.These parameters allow you to change the slope for any incremental increase in the tech index after the technology and the first feature have been developed.For example, a value of 0.5 means that only half of the rise in tech index is counted against features after the tech index reaches the 100 level.

Increase in level required for a new feature
These parameters dictate the required increase in tech index level for any given new feature.Available technologies are at a level of 100 or higher and include the first feature.
All subsequent features require an increase in the index as detailed here.

HR hiring limit parameters and example calculation
The amount of personnel that can be hired during the current round is limited by wages, training expenditure and company success.This maximum limit can be determined using the parameters below.The elasticity of company success effect is the same as for turnover.You can use the example calculation in the case management tool to experiment with different variables to see where the hiring limit is being set. 

Custom texts
Texts page includes a list of text strings that can be customized for any Global Challenge course.Note that, the customized texts only appear in their respective languages and only four languages can be customized as of this moment: English, Lithuanian, Russian and French.The custom texts can be used to customize the concepts of "technology", "features" or "promotion" to be something else.
List of texts that can be customized: You have the options to include additional module in your course such as human resources decisions and finished goods inventories.HR module will introduce a range of personnel decisions and it will alter the in-house research and development to be based on man-days instead of just cash payments.Finished goods inventories module will add inventories to market area 1 and market area 2 and excess production will no longer be scaled down but flow into inventories.Products are stored without features and the simulation company uses the FIFO (first in first out) method.More HR and inventory parameters can be found under Production page and R&D and HR page.

Other modules
 Construction delay for production plants You have the option to reduce the time it takes to start production in new production plants from 2 rounds to just 1.In this case the cash payments will still occur with the same schedule; only production can start one round earlier.

Custom market area names and currencies
 Custom currencies (27 predetermined alternatives and option to name a custom currency)  Custom market names  Initial foreign exchange rates You can activate custom market area names by checking the box next to the desired market area and inputting your custom area name of choice under "Market area".Please, note that the custom name you choose will appear in the game under every language.Currencies can be altered using the respective select boxes.You can also choose to set your own currency symbol by picking other from the list.All changes are automatically reflected everywhere in the game, except for market outlooks.The exchange rate input uses the alternative method from finance page (it must be separately selected) and is included on this page for convenience as it is highly likely that the absolute value of exchange rate must be adjusted given any currency change.
Remember that the custom currency and market name changes are not automatically reflected in market outlooks.


Market area 1 -> Market area 2 (7.0 USD)  Market area 1 -> Market area 3 (3.0USD)  Market area 2 -> Market area 1 (7.0 USD)  Market area 2 -> Market area 3 (3.0USD) Transportation costs per unit Transportation cost parameters are set in base currency per unit.Each product that is transported across market areas is subject to transportation costs according to these parameters.Note that there are no transportation charges in sales within the production area.Market area 1 -> Market area 2 (15.0 USD)  Market area 1 -> Market area 3 (9.0USD)  Market area 2 -> Market area 1 (15.0USD)  Market area 2 -> Market area 3 (5.0USD)

First
Tech index increase per man-dayThese parameters detail the effect of development efforts on tech index increase, but they are not directly comparable to the required increases in tech index parameters.Tech 1 (250)  Tech 2 (202)  Tech 3 (160)  Tech 4 (120) the ability to change initial decisions (those taken by teams for the 0 round in order to form the starting point of the simulation exercise) and assign custom validation limits to all decisions.List of contents Initial decisions values  Original initial decision values for reference  Student decision-making area default values for reference  Custom validation checkboxes  Minimum and maximum validation limits for decisions Network coverage forecasts  New tech +1 feature  New tech +2 features  New tech +3 features  New tech +4 features  New tech +5 features  1 additional feature  2 additional features  3 additional features  4 additional features  5 additional features  Features  Feature cost, feature/product  Number of features  Total features available  Feature costs  Money needed for new features  Maximum number of features available is  Tech 1  Tech 2  Tech 3  Tech 4  Promotion  Advertising  Promotion must be between  Number of offered features  Company advertising  Tech advertising Modules Modules page includes parameters that affect the simulation market and company structure, and custom naming parameters.Customizable decision making areas and simulation market structure  Human resources module  Finished goods inventories