Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), August 19, 2017 -- The innovations in Monsoon Business Simulation or MonsoonSIM that were being used in the 2017 "MonsoonSIM Enterprise Resource Planning Competition" Malaysia Final hosted by Asia Pacific University for the second year running, mark a major step forward in the Experiential Learning of ERP system and Integrated Business Concepts as educators and learners of institutes of Higher Learning all over the world are gearing up for Disruptive Business Education, also befitted this year's conference chosen theme, Adopting "Sustainable Disruptive Innovation" in Education due to MonsoonSIM's constant innovative upgrading.
MonsoonSIM ERP Competition, an annual business competition co-organized by Asia Pacific University's(APU) Faculty of Business & Management, SAP, Monsoon Academy, Knowledgecom, and Infusion this year, aims to encourage students to experientially learn about Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) via Gamification and to incubate future ERP talents. Through the fun and interactive cloud-based MonsoonSIM platform, the students experience managing virtual companies in real time, and learn how 12 different business modules – Finance, Production, Material Requirements Planning(MRP), Warehousing and Logistics, Forecasting, Procurement, Asset Maintenance, Retail, Wholesaling, Marketing, Customer Service, and Human Resources – are interlinked.
105 students from 6 universities... Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Universiti Malaysia Pahang, Multimedia University, University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, and Asia Pacific University, were all set to compete against one another in teams of 5 for the highest point margins. Lecturers of students, speakers, and guests were among the attendees who showed up at Auditorium 1 of the main building on the beautiful new campus of Asia Pacific University(APU) early Saturday morning. It was a great atmosphere inside, to say the least. MC of the day Miss Kavitha Arunasalam of APU started off with remarks on the importance of education to each and everyone of us, and that debate about the potential of technology in higher education which is a segment that needs disruptive innovation to meet the ever-changing education landscape and challenging workplace, has never been more intense.
Delivering the opening address, Dr. Siva Muthaly, Dean of the Faculty of Business & Management, who has been involved with higher education in Australia, USA, India, and now Malaysia for the last 27 years, and who has more than 10 years of experience in the corporate sector, has also published over 100 journals & conference papers, thanked all the professors for helping their students, and spoke of the importance of communication and social interaction skills that are crucial in the real world for employers want people who can communicate, and also want people who interact. "The more you interact, the better you become, as in MonsoonSIM", said Dr. Siva. This encouragement certainly had set the tone for the day's important Competition. Dr. Siva also appreciated the Scoring Matrix of MonsoonSIM because it really depicts the real life situation of an organization in terms of priorities given.
MC Miss Kavitha Arunasalam
Dean Siva 's opening address
Participants of the day
Mr, Cheong Hom Tai, Senior Manager of Knowledgecom Sdn.Bhd., an established IT Training Center and our Platinum Sponsor for the Competition, took the stage and introduced Industry 4.0, a revolution happening in the world that is also called Smart Factory -- Transforming Industrial Production. There are 9 pillars in Industry 4.0 and one of them is System Integration in which MonsoonSIM fits perfectly because it talks about ERP system and so, students are learning a bit of Industry 4.0 through MonsoonSIM indirectly. Mr. Hom also talked about the Partnership with Monsoon Academy since 2014 and is still happy with it.
Platinum sponsor, Mr Cheong of Knowledgecom Sdn.Bhd.
As soon as the bell rang, the event kicked off in the computer labs on the 8th floor with Mr. Alex Ong of Monsoon Academy facilitating the competition of all 21 teams separated into A, B, and C groups that ran concurrently for all in the same big computer lab. The teams worked towards the objective of running a successful virtual enterprise as they applied the business concepts they had learned and reacted quickly to situations based on practical constraints similar to real-life situations. At this time, the whole room became a simulation battlefield in a somewhat quiet manner, unlike first-time competitors who are always exuberant, understandably so.
Meanwhile in Auditorium 1, Mr. Abdy Taminsyah, President of Monsoon Academy spoke about how technology has changed our lives, cultures, behaviors, and the way we access information. Because internet technology has made the younger generation more tech-savvy, these changes need to be incorporated in education as well. He pointed to research that shows 70% of our knowledge comes from experience, 20% comes from social learning while only 10% of our knowledge comes from formal education. As such, this learning framework is true in today's dynamic environment where disruption and change are the only constants. Yet, according to him, not many universities have actually morphed themselves into this 70:20:10 model. The sad thing is that most still only use the traditional "Powerpoint" or "e-learning", teaming it up with the occasional "labs", "workshops", "field trips" even though they acknowledge that the value added knowledge comes from experiential learning.
Teams in Actions....
Miss Arunasalam and Miss Arumugam of APU spoke about a study focus towards rural colleges in Tamil Nadu, India where community has limited access to get sufficient and latest resources, followed by Miss Noor Ismawati Jaafar, Mr. Sulaiman Ainin, and Mr. M. Muzamil Naqshbandi of the University of Malaya speaking about the effect of computer-mediated communication competency on young adults personal development: The mediating roles of online engagement.
Miss Nurul Nazlia Jamil of APU gave a presentation on the role of sustainability and innovation in constructing Accounting Education and future Accountants of Malaysia setting. The study aims to examine to what extent and the effectiveness of such role.
Miss Geetha Rubasundram of APU, Chief Organizer of the Competition and Conference, spoke about the Gamification of ERP that serves as a value creation tool for Educators. She stressed that Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) system have always been a beneficial tool for firms around the world. Graduate are expected to have a technology-based knowledge, on the systems in place and its integration with the business world. Traditional academic teaching provides the theory and possible application based, but its effectiveness in achieving learning outcomes have been questioned by past researchers. Her research aims to assess the feedback from 17,015 students who have used MonsoonSIM, a game based learning platform, built on the SAP ERP knowledge. This qualitative research aims to access 1) the motivation of students 2) preference to incorporate it as part of the syllabus 3) comparison to the traditional method of teaching and learning.
Miss Geetha sharing MonsoonSIM Experiencial Learning platform as a "Sustainable Disruptive Innovation" in Education.
Dr. Mohamad Shah Kassim, Prof Zulkifli Khair, and Prof Shafudin Mohd Yatim of UTM talked about Radical and Disruptive innovation in higher education, and also MonsoonSIM Key Points and Workshop & Training. According to him, information and communication technology (ICT) has grown so rapidly, changed and keep changing the world including higher education. This concept paper tends to review radical and disruptive innovation in higher education. Blended learning could be the practical way in applying ICT. They found the radical and disruptive innovation in higher education could be explained in two perspectives; implementation in transforming the university and in developing innovative university as well as producing graduates that could create future radical and disruptive innovation. They also established that there are at least three patterns of the leading innovative universities; first, able to get big funding from the privates, second, could produce high impact research and third, focus on technical and engineering as core programs.
Dr. Shah on uses of MonsoonSIM
It was an intense atmosphere back at the competition for only the top 3 of each group, 9 in total would emerge as finalists in the afternoon Final. As they were battling out towards the last stage of the 130 virtual days that was configured in the competition, J2 of UTAR and GLHF of APU in Group A were neck and neck but they both looked set to finish 1 and 2 as the battle between ITM of MMU and Tornado of APU for the 3rd place became intensified down the stretch. At the end, it was ITM of MMU who won out by a tiny margin. So, in this A group, J2 of UTAR, GLHF of APU, and ITM of MMU were through to the afternoon Final. As for group B down the stretch, Javaman of UTAR was destined to win as they were leading Budak Getah of UTM who was in second place by quite a margin. At the end, both Javaman of UTAR and Budak Getah of UTM made it through, and so did Innohalia of UTM who beat 4th place Risk Takers of APU by a big margin. As everyone turned his attention to Group C, KENCHANG of UTM looked comfortable in the lead, and both Loan Shark of APU and Silent of UTAR were set to finish 2 and 3 respectively.
Semi-final results
After the fight for supremacy in the afternoon final had begun, Mr. Vel Muruga, Project Consultant of Knowledgecom, talked Industry 4.0, the 9 pillars of Technology to the audience. Industry 4.0 describes a future state of an industry characterized by thorough digitization of economic and production flows. It requires horizontal integration at every step in the production process, in interaction with machines. In the globally interconnected world of Industry 4.0, machines also interact with one another. Out of the 9 pillars... Autonomous robots; Simulation; Horizontal and vertical system integration; The Industrial Internet of Things; Cybersecurity; The Cloud; Additive manufacturing; Augmented reality; Big data and analytics, Mr Muruga only covered Cybersecurity by stressing that those who learn it well would have a market demand with good pay, and Manufacturing that involves work such as 3-D printing for Ferrari piston.
Mr. Muruga on Industry 4.0 - nine pillars
Half way through the 130 virtual days, many teams were neck and neck, see sawing, changing hands in lead back and forth...but with 30 virtual days remaining, KENCHANG of UTM and Budak Getah also of UTM pulled away from the pack leaving the rest behind and Javaman of UTAR in third place. AT this time, the fight for Champion between KENCHANG and Budak Getah had just begun. Neck and neck all the way... counting-down to the last virtual day and sprinting to beat the clock, KENCHANG, by virtue of doing better in utilization of All Space and Machine Capacity, managed to pull it off thanks to Scoring Matrix even though Budak Getah did better in Net Profit. At the end, team KENCHANG pocketed the top prize of RM3,000, Budak Getah came in second and won a prize of RM2,000, and Javaman finished third with a prize of RM1,000.
MonsoonSIM President, Mr. Abdy Taminsyah and Dean Siva with 2nd Runner Up, Javaman
Mr. Abdy Taminsyah, Dr. Shah, and Dean Siva with 1st Runner Up, Budak Getah
Abdy Taminsyah, Dr. Shah, and Dean Siva with CHAMPION, Kenchang
The rest of the competitors all had put up a very good fight and won a consolation prize of RM300 each. I am confident that MonsoonSIM ERP by way of Experiential Learning had helped them see how different modules of business are interlinked, and how such interrelated relationships serve to raise their level of understanding in doing business. By all means, I am sure they would realize that there's more to MonsoonSIM than just Game. When all was said and done for the day, we appreciated their participations very much. The fact that they can make it to APU for this Country Final, they were already winners. I am sure they will value this experience in time to come.
Many thanks to Dr. Siva and relevant personnel of APU for hosting this event and making it a success.
Thanks to our Platinum sponsor Knowledgecom.
Thanks to all the speakers for giving us good information.
Thanks to all the students for joining the competition, and thanks to all the lecturers for leading them.
A very special thanks to Miss Geetha - this event would not have been taken place without her time and effort.
Congratulations to Kenchang and Budak Getah for winning their tickets to Bangkok, Thailand.
Goodbye for now and see you in Bangkok !