Business games: a proposal to train engineering students

Abstract

This article presents the development of a business game model referring to an industry that produces three types of skateboards, considering the production and financial sectors in particular, in order to train Production Engineering students. The game simulates the performance of five companies in an environment where they compete with each other in a market that has a specific demand for each type of skateboard. Players manage material and financial resources in order to obtain higher profits at the end of each period. The model was programmed in Microsoft Excel 2007 and applied to students who attended the ninth and tenth period of the Production Engineering course. The results showed that the use of the business game improves the participants understanding of how to manage a company, due to the competitive and dynamic environment into which the students are inserted, in addition to encouraging them to make better decisions in order to obtain the highest possible profit.

Keywords

• Business game
• Planning and production control
• Financial management
• Training.