Capsim business simulations · Advanced
CapsimOps Business Simulation
Operations in the spotlight. Teams run the same cross-functional company, and supply chain, quality, inventory, and workforce decisions determine whether it can deliver what marketing promised.
Five-minute walkthrough of the starting scenario. Instructor and student support is included, and your first delivery is shadowed by a Capsim consultant.
On this pageWhere it fitsScenarioDecisionsObjectivesCompareFormatsScoringFAQ
- Level
- Advanced
- Market
- 2 segments: Low Tech, High Tech
- Products
- 1 to start, up to 4
- Rounds
- Up to 8 competition rounds (+ practice); each round is one year
- Round length
- 60–150 minutes in a seminar; a week in a course
- Teams
- 3–7 per company (5 ideal)
- Industry
- 2–10 companies, human or automated
- Scoring
- Stars · Success Measures
- Best for
- Operations, supply chain, and logistics courses; technical professionals
Where it fits
Operations, decided inside a whole company.
In the curriculum
CapsimOps is the simulation for operations, supply chain, and logistics courses that want operations to be a strategic function rather than a set of formulas. Teams still run marketing and finance, so an operational advantage has to be sold and paid for, and an operational mistake shows up in the share price. Same engine as Capstone, similar play time, a two-segment market so the operational decisions get the attention.
- Operations management
- Supply chain management and logistics
- Specialized modules inside a strategy or MBA program
- Prework before a Comp-XM exam
In corporate programs
Engineering, technology, and healthcare professionals use CapsimOps to see how operations decisions land in finance and marketing, and how an operational advantage becomes a strategic one. Executive programs use it to sharpen operations strategy for managers who already run a plant, a supply chain, or a service line.
The scenario
The same company, with the operations problems switched on.
A government has broken up a monopoly into identical companies. Each team takes one. The company looks healthy on paper, but the monopoly hid its problems: a product that pleases no one in particular, capacity in the wrong place, a capital structure nobody chose on purpose. Teams fix what's broken while building an advantage the other teams can't easily match.
The product is a sensor. Deliberately generic, so no team arrives with an industry playbook. Customers judge it on positioning, price, reliability, and age of design.
Two segments on the map, Low Tech and High Tech, with an ideal spot in each that moves every year. The map is Capstone's without the three middle segments, so the marketing problem stays manageable and operations becomes the hard part.
Seven operations initiatives sit on top of the base scenario: supply chain (local against global sourcing), process quality, product quality, inventory control, and three HR programs (assembly-team training, recruitment and retention, sales-force compensation). Together they move nine performance measures: material cost, labor cost, R&D cycle time, demand, accessibility, productivity, employee turnover, inventory carrying cost, and production yield.
Three forces make standing still a decision too.
- Competition. Every company starts with the same flaws, and the team that fixes them first pulls ahead.
- Industry growth. Segments grow at different rates, so capacity has to be bought before the demand arrives.
- Changing technology. Customers expect smaller, more capable products every year. A product left alone drifts out of its segment.
What teams decide
The decisions, function by function.
Operations management reaches well past the plant, and CapsimOps makes that concrete: a sourcing decision changes demand, a training decision changes cycle time, and finance has to fund both before either pays back.
Reposition, revise, invent
Move products toward the ideal spot, raise reliability, invent for the other segment. Cycle time is now something the team can shorten, or lengthen.
Price, promote, sell, forecast
Set price, promotion, sales budget, and a forecast that operations will be held to.
Capacity, automation, and the operations initiatives
Capacity and automation as in every Capsim simulation, plus sourcing, quality, and inventory policies that change yield, carrying cost, and material cost.
Fund it all
Issue stock and debt, pay dividends, and fund initiatives that pay back over rounds without triggering an emergency loan.
Modules that raise the stakes. R&D and TQM are built into the operations problem. HR and Internet of Things are optional modules. Play time is about a third longer than the introductory simulation and directly comparable to Capstone. The nine add-in modules →
Learning objectives
What students can do when they've run it.
CapsimOps carries the strategy objectives of the family and adds four operational ones.
- Strategic analysis. Assess the company and its industry with frameworks such as SWOT, PESTEL, and Porter's Five Forces.
- Business planning. Commit to a strategy: market position, source of competitive advantage, and where growth will come from.
- Supply chain management. Design a supply chain end to end, trading the cost of distant suppliers against the resilience of local ones.
- Quality management. Fund process and product quality initiatives and see them in yield, cost, and demand.
- Inventory control. Balance supply against demand to cut carrying cost without stocking out.
- Operational human resources. Recruit, train, and retain the workforce that productivity and cycle time depend on.
- Cross-functional decision making. Make the calls in every function so that they add up to one strategy, for this round and the ones after it.
- Performance measures. Choose the indicators and targets that will tell the team whether the strategy is working.
- Implementation and execution. Turn a strategy into a sequence of funded decisions, and keep executing as competitors respond.
- Project management. Plan investments that take rounds to pay back, across functions, without running out of cash.
- Team development. Work through the stages of a team under deadline pressure, and lead through them.
- Change management. Redirect a company mid-course when the market or a module makes the plan obsolete.
- Communication with stakeholders. Present the company's mission, strategy, results, and decisions to a board, a class, or a client, in writing and in person.
- Assurance-of-learning prework. Refresh and integrate the whole curriculum before an accreditation exam such as Comp-XM.
How it compares
How the four simulations differ.
Every Capsim business simulation runs on the same platform: the same round cycle, the same reports, the same cross-functional decisions. Learn to run one and you can run them all. They differ in how much market there is to read and where the pressure lands.
| Simulation | Level | Segments | Products | Global markets | Scoring | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CapsimCoreFoundational, fully cross-functional | Beginner | 2 | 1–4 | No | Stars, Success Measures, Balanced Scorecard | Strategy fundamentals |
| CapsimGlobalA domestic company goes multinational | Intermediate | 2 | 1–4 | Yes | Stars, Success Measures | International strategy |
| CapsimOpsThis pageOperations in the spotlight | Advanced | 2 | 1–4 | No | Stars, Success Measures | Operations management |
| CapstoneMost usedThe comprehensive flagship, Capsim's most-used simulation | Advanced | 5 | 5–8 | No | Stars, Success Measures, Balanced Scorecard, Triple-Bottom-Line mode | Advanced strategy & capstone |
Choose CapsimOps when operations is the course. It matches Capstone in duration and plays on the two-segment map, so the operational decisions get the attention instead of competing with a five-segment marketing problem. A strategy course at full depth points to Capstone, a first strategy course to CapsimCore, an international course to CapsimGlobal.
Formats and pacing
Formats, and how long each one runs.
CapsimOps paces like Capstone: a two-day seminar runs five rounds, a semester runs eight with practice rounds in front. Add the operations initiatives one at a time from the early competition rounds so their payback has time to arrive.
| Format | Length | Rounds | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two-day seminar | 2 days | Practice + 5 | Corporate business-acumen or leadership cohort |
| Blended seminar | 1 onsite day + 7 online sessions + wrap-up | Practice + 8 | Corporate universities, events, exec ed |
| Semester course | 13 weeks | Up to 4 practice + 8 | Strategy, capstone, and MBA courses |
| Module or quarter | 6–10 weeks | 1–2 practice + 6–8 | Compressed academic terms; two debriefs a week |
Onsite, online, or blended, and any class size from a single team to more than a thousand participants across sections. Sizing, coaching setups, and technical requirements: how a delivery runs →
How it's scored
The simulation scores the company. Comp-XM scores the student.
Company performance
Stars give a quick read each round. Success Measures let each team weight the measures that fit its strategy and be scored on its own terms; in an operations course, instructors often weight productivity, inventory, and quality measures alongside profit.
Every round ends with automated debriefs and reports; a custom report builder lets you grade participation as well as results.
Individual evidence, for assurance of learning
Teams share a score, so team results can't stand in for each student's learning. Comp-XM closes that gap: each student runs the same simulation again on their own, then answers the board's questions, scored against the Big 7 learning goals. Four to six hours, individually. CapsimInbox-XM is the faster alternative: students interpret their company's report through a board-meeting inbox in one to two hours.
How Capsim measures the individual →You're never running it alone
What comes with the simulation.
Questions faculty ask
Frequently asked
Is CapsimOps only for operations courses?
It's built for them, but it's a whole-company simulation: teams run marketing and finance as well. Engineering, technology, and healthcare programs use it because it shows how an operational decision lands in the rest of the business.
How does it differ from Capstone?
Same engine, same controls, similar play time. Capstone has five market segments and the full set of case modules; CapsimOps has two segments and seven operations initiatives (supply chain, quality, inventory, and workforce) that move nine performance measures. In Capstone, strategy is the hard problem. In CapsimOps, it's operations.
Do students need business courses first?
They need the vocabulary of an operations or supply chain course. Students without business background take longer in the early rounds; allow more time or run a practice round or two more.
How long does it take?
A two-day seminar runs a practice round and five competition rounds; a semester runs up to eight rounds at one a week. Each round is one year.
How is it graded?
Stars and Success Measures score the company every round, with the operations measures available to weight. For individual grades, pair the team result with Comp-XM or CapsimInbox-XM.
Does it work with our LMS?
Yes. CapsimOps runs in the browser and integrates with Canvas, Blackboard, and the other major systems: single sign-on and gradebook sync.
Playing CapsimOps in your course?
Log in to your simulation, get help from support, or see whether your team qualifies for the Capsim Challenge.
See CapsimOps in your course.
A 30-minute demo, mapped to your syllabus or program. We'll show the round cycle, the reports, and how it's scored.