A Mathematical Model of the Beer Game

The American Production and Inventory Control Society Dictionary defines the term supply chain (SC) as “the process from the initial raw materials to the ultimate consumption of the finished product linking across supplier–user companies.” Supply chain management (SCM) literature covers wide range of areas such as logistics, production, scheduling, facility location, procurement, inventory management, ordering management, and so on. Due to the increasing competition in today's global market, business enterprises are forced to ...

Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, 2014

The supply chain, impacted by production strategies and stock-up or addendum policies, often causes information confusion and forms the bullwhip effect. Instructors were often only able to talk about the various types of strategies and influences imposed by various business performance indexes when lecturing on the supply chain management courses. Although, by developing a ‘beer game’ information system (MIT Forum has its Web-based version), the Northwestern University in U.S. has addressed that the problems of supply chain are solved and whoever interested in supply chain can participate in the beer game and learn about the supply chain through playing. However, the fixed and un-modifiable imitative setup and system parameters that could not be flexibly adjusted by the instructors were indeed the biggest weakness of the game. As the result, this paper has proposed an agent based beer game which enables not only for instructors to set supply chain scale freely or imitate various...

Complexity, 2015

A supply-chain is a series of connected stock management structures. Therefore, the structure of a supply-chain consists of many cascading inventory management problems. It is known that the optimal inventory control parameter values suggested by the literature are also valid for a supply-chain. The motivation for this study is to investigate the effect of the literature suggested optimal values of the parameters of a dynamic decision making heuristic in the presence of semi-rationally managed supply-chain echelons. We employ a soft coded version of The Beer Game as an experimental platform to carry out the study. We use a much longer time horizon than the one used in the board version of The Beer Game to prevent a potential short-term horizon effect. The results of the simulation runs carried out in this study do not support the use of the well-established decision parameter values for the echelon of concern if the other echelons' inventories are managed suboptimally.

academic-journal.org

The new trends in inter-organisation configurations are challenging the traditional concept of supply chain. Concepts such as Virtual Enterprise have been introduced to describe scenarios in which manufacturers operate as nodes within a network of suppliers, customers, engineers, and other specialised service functions. Our aim is to build a simulation tool based on the rules of the Beer Game which includes the variables of a virtual enterprise, VirtuE in particular, and risk management, in order to understand the strategies underlying the subject"s behaviour in the face of risk within a means-end chain. The simulation tool will contribute to understand the complexity of managing decision-making in supply chains and networks. This study presents the tests carried out on the original game, the new variables introduced and the simulation results 2 .

2008

A game called the Quebec Wood Supply Game (QWSG) is a role-playing simulation based on the Beer Game for teaching Supply Chain (SC) dynamics, and, in particular, the bullwhip effect. In this context, this paper describes and compares two simulators based on the QWSG which may be used to study decision making and its impact on SC dynamics. We first focus on the direct implementation of the QWSG in a spreadsheet program.

Asian Economic and Social Society (AESS), 2013

The primary challenge in SCM pedagogy is the learners’ interaction with the dynamic nature of supply chain transactions. Once achieved, it is also required to evaluate learners’ learning experience based on their performance. In this paper, a combination of outcome-based education (OBE) and simulation-based education is proposed focusing on beer game theory. The analysis is based on 336 runs of beer game simulation within a target group of 56 participants divided into 14 subgroups (SG1-SG14).The purpose of the study is mainly to investigate the effect of mutual interactions on students’ learning process using supply chain total cost and ordering fluctuations as critical measurement criteria.

A wide spectre of different t ypes of quantitative models is availa ble to address strategic operations management de cision problems. This paper arg ues that bu siness games are a n alternative to "traditional" discrete -event and continuous simulation method s for analysing complex supply c hain problems. Business games capture the organizational and human aspects in supply chain problems that are difficult to model with traditional simulation methods. The comput erized version of the Beer Game is an example of the use of business games in sup ply chain decision making. The r ecomm endation of business games is based on a simulation application su rvey carried out by the authors and the theoretical approach of Flood and Jackson (1991).

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018

This work focuses on two-step decision problem through a biform game. At the first, in an uncertain environment, each distribution center must define the quantities to be ordered from the production units in order to maximize its own gain. This requires a good forecast of demand. When the demand is deterministic, the centers collaborate to meet their local demand. In this case, it is necessary to define the appropriate cost allocation method, especially since no method guarantees all the properties defined by the literature. This paper proposes an application case of bottling company in morocco. We use neural networks to forecast demand. In the phase of collaboration, we split cost using different methods and analyze results.

2014

At the University of Nova Gorica we introduced game playing as a didactical approach for learning the role of information support in supply chain management. We implemented a well-known beer distribution game developed at MIT Sloan School of Management more than fifty years ago. The game is regularly used in the Business information systems course in the Engineering and Management study programme at University of Nova Gorica. The supporting computer program that enables the game to be played using mobile devices was developed by the course teacher. The game playing in this course has proved to be very efficient for learning the importance of relevant information flows for better decision making.

2009

Our aim is to create a simulation based on the rules of the Beer Game which includes the variables of a virtual enterprise, VirtuE in particular, and risk management, in order to understand the strategies underlying the subjects behavior in the face of risk within a means-end chain. This study shows the tests carried out on the original game, the variables that we proposed and the simulation results.

Sustainable Logistics and Strategic Transportation Planning

This chapter reviews the potential benefits and challenges of knowledge-based computer game simulation as means of understanding the dynamics of global procurement and manufacturing supply chains. In particular the chapter focuses on the use of software agents to assist decision making across the supply chain, for example in raw material procurement. The chapter describes a framework for supply chain scenarios in multi-agent based simulation games. The agents' behaviour is governed by business rules, based on the concept of normative knowledge representation and its reasoning mechanism (known as rule-based reasoning, RBR) and that also come closer to the task that confronts the supply chain operational manager – the analysis of current case in hand in terms of previously decided business problem solutions, known as case-based reasoning (CBR). The aim is to introduce more realistic behavior of the supply chain actors and improve understanding in operational management of supply c...

Social Science Research Network, 2007

One of the main supply chain deficiencies is the bullwhip effect: demand fluctuations increase as one moves up the supply chain from retailer to manufacturer. The Beer Distribution Game is widely known for illustrating these supply chain dynamics in class. In this paper we present a spreadsheet application, exploring the two key causes of the bullwhip effect: demand forecasting and the type of ordering policy. We restrict our attention to a single product two-echelon system and illustrate how tuning the parameters of the replenishment policy induces or reduces the bullwhip effect. We also demonstrate how bullwhip reduction (dampening the order variability) may have an adverse impact on inventory holdings and/or customer service. As such, the spreadsheets can be used as an educational tool to gain a clear insight into the use of inventory control policies and forecasting in relation to the bullwhip effect and customer service.

Klíčová slova: pivo, výroba piva, diskrétní simulace, simulační model, simulační experiment ■ ■ 1 ÚVOD Simulaci lze definovat jako napodobení dynamického procesu v rámci zkoumaného systému pomocí modelu za účelem provádění experimentů, kterými lze získat informace využitelné v reálném systému (VDI 3633, Blatt 1, 2010)� Využití diskrétní simulace za účelem ověření funkčnosti plánovaných výrobních systémů i jejich operativního řízení je dnes v podnicích zaměřených na hromadnou výrobu denní praxí� V závislosti na různých fázích projektů plánování či říze-Jiří HLOSKA, Miroslav ŠKOPÁN Ústav automobilního a dopravního inženýrství, Fakulta strojního inženýrství, Vysoké učení technické v Brně, Technická 2896/2, 619 69 Brno / Recenzovaný článek / Reviewed paper Hloska, J. -Škopán, M.: Plánování a řízení provozu pivovaru s podporou počítačové simulace. Kvasny Prum� 60, 2014, č� 6, s� 146-150

Mathematical Problems in Engineering

INFORMS Transactions on Education, 2006

Supply chain management is a topic that many practitioners and students generally find difficult to understand (Boudette [Boudette, N. 2005. Chrysler offers bonuses to dealers: Move to reduce inventory aims to close year strong, but the reaction is mixed. The Wall Street Journal (December 13)]). The authors present a supply chain game that they have found to be an effective tool to increase student interest in and comprehension of supply chain management. The supply chain game literature is briefly reviewed. The poker chip game is discussed with respect to the well-known Beer Game. The poker chip game is a multi-product, multi-customer, multi-echelon, stochastic supply chain game used to teach the problems of traditional push models (economic order quantity/reorder point and Min-Max inventory models) and the elements of the new pull models (Just inTime and Theory of Constraints).