The Beergame in Teaching business-to-business eCommerce

The New Educational Review

The paper focuses on the selection, application and evaluation of games suitable to enhance teaching and learning processes in two courses related to logistics and supply chain management (SCM) at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade. The selection procedure of logistics and SCM games which incorporates the database of these games and a multi-criteria analysis are designed and applied. Based on requirements to support practicing the distribution requirements planning (DRP) a new game has also been designed. The outcomes of post-game evaluation have shown that students like playing logistics and SCM games and that playing these games helps them learn something they have not previously known. The results of this study are useful for both academics and practitioners interested in training and education of logistics and supply chain (SC) professionals.

Simulation Conference (WSC), …, 2011

Today's third level students are of a virtual generation, where online interactive multi-player games, virtual reality and simulations are a part of everyday life, making gaming and simulation a very important catalyst in the learning process. Teaching methods have to be more innovative to help students understand the complexity of decisions within dynamic supply chain environment. Interactive simulation games have the potential to be an efficient and enjoyable means of learning. A serious interactive business game, Automobile Supply Chain Management Game (AUSUM), has been introduced in this paper. Using theories learnt in class as a knowledge base, participants have to develop effective supply chain partnership strategy to enhance their supply chain networks. Deploying the game over the web encourages student interaction and group work. Most importantly the game will enable students to fundamentally grasp the impact of strategic decisions on other parts and players of the supply chain network.

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.

Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, 2007

Advances in Production Management Systems. The Path to Intelligent, Collaborative and Sustainable Manufacturing

The use of business games can help users to find solutions to complex management problems, to develop critical and strategic thinking skills, and to prepare professionals for the labor market. Business games as an active learning method has been widely debated, and there is a continuing interest in how students learn when they are stimulated. The goal of this research is to analyze the application of business games as an effective teaching methodology and decision-making in logistics processes in business administration undergraduate courses. The business game ENTERSIM was built with software and cloud computing. As the results, the student's testimonies showed some deficiencies in the instructions given and in the activity application's time. However, students emphasized the wish to carry out again activities that involve business games for bringing theory to practice. Students recognized the contribution of the business game to improve learning about operations, problem-solving, and decision-making.

Game-based learning has been introduced as an interactive tool to facilitate learning and training processes in various fields, including supply chain management (SCM). Most of these games are specifically designed to focus on certain scenarios and concepts. For example, the original beer distribution game focuses on a single product supply chain without considering capacity and process reliability into account. This creates challenges for extending the games to cover other concepts in SCM. To tackle this problem, we propose a board game, titled ThinkLog, as a face-to-face extendable framework to facilitate learning in SCM. It can be extended to generate different scenarios for various concepts in SCM without changing the basic game structure. Using this principle, we have extended the basic version of ThinkLog to two other scenarios, namely: humanitarian logistics and urban logistics, by simply modifying the rule of the game. Each scenario would have different learning objectives embedded in the gameplay. The game is also complemented with a computer-based application (digital application) to enhance the overall learning experience and collect relevant data (data gathering) during a game session. These three scenarios have been evaluated on four-interactive sessions with government officials and policy-makers in Indonesia. Each session has been consistent in its acceptance of the game as a tool to facilitate learning in SCM, regardless of the scenarios that we played. Our learning objective evaluation also shows that the game is effective in deepening the players' understanding of SCM concepts.

This paper has two goals: The first is to present a computerized version of "Beer Game" originally developed as a board game to teach managers the principles of supply chain management. The multiplayer interactive simulation game we develop is 100 percent faithful to the original game, so that experimental results from the physical and computerized environments can be safely compared. The simulation model used to represent the game also illustrates some subtleties that a model builder must be careful about while simulating a discrete and physical game. Secondly, the game was used as an experimental platform and experiments were done in order to analyze game medium (computer vs. board), demand pattern and learning effects on performances of players. One striking result is the fact that subjects who played the board game scored significantly better than those who played the computerized version in the same conditions. 1

Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, 2016

Many books describe Supply Chain Collaboration (SCC), an important idea in the business world. Numerous successfulexamples of SCC are described in these books. Basic contents of teaching SCC at a university are explanation of SCC’stheory and successful case studies. Moreover, some teachers use SCC computer games in the lecture as educationalassistance. Regarding development of a SCC computer game themselves, the more they want to teach SCC knowledge, themore the computer game becomes complicated. These cir-cumstances are satisfied by teachers, but students might feelembarrassment. Students, except some very good students, assume that managing SCC theory and many parameters foroperating SCC computer game are extremely difficult, such that they can not be used. To resolve these misunderstandings,the authors developed simple SCC analogue games. As de-scribed in this report, the basic idea of BASE SCC games and theeducational effectiveness of applying SCC games to the lec-ture of SIIT...

2012 Sixth Asia Modelling Symposium, 2012

This paper presents a simulation-based business game for training and education in the area of supply chain management. It starts with a short review of existing simulation games used for training and education in supply chain management, which is followed by a brief description of the ECLIPS game that has been developed for providing an insight into various aspects of supply chain management, with opportunity to analyze different supply chain structures and control mechanisms. In particular, the application of the ECLIPS game to comparison of different supply chain inventory management policies, including non-cyclic and cyclic ones, is provided. Also, the paper presents a special computeraided tool that allows testing and evaluating various scenarios of the ECLIPS game. The method of scenario evaluation is described as well.

This paper examines the development of a business simulation game for training and education in the area of supply chain management. The paper be- gins by identifying the need for an apparatus that could be used in many disci- plines, minimising the learning time with regard to the simulator with reasonable parameterisation, followed by a brief conclusion about the available games. Fidel- ity and embodied experiences are needs that are effectively detected in the design process, demonstrating the relevance of these aspects. One topic of interest is that the effects of the main functions of management (marketing, finance, and produc- tion) were minimised in this game to make decisions on logistics with higher rele- vance. This paper describes the process that was used to design the simulator and draws the first conclusions about interface, usability, technical functionality and potential adoption in an educational context.

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.

Proceedings of the XV international symposium SYMORG 2016: „Reshaping the Future through Sustainable Business Development and Entrepreneurship“, ISBN 978-86-7680-326-2, 2016

This research paper examines the current state of the application of the educational games in teaching logistics and supply chain management (SCM) in higher education institutions in the Republic of Serbia. The data for the study were collected from competent teaching staff through a questionnaire administered on-line using Qualtrics Research Suite. The results of the study show that educational games are not used to a great extent in teaching logistics and SCM at faculties in the Republic of Serbia. The most common reason for this lies in that teaching staff is not sufficiently familiar with the logistics and SCM games. At the same time, the results reveal the ubiquitous interest of the teaching staff for games introduction into the teaching of logistics and SCM. When it comes to the teaching scholars who use educational games, the results show that educational games are equally used at the state and private faculties and that the teachers are satisfied with the possibilities of improving students' competences with the use of games.

2008

Supply chain management (SCM), due to the large scale and wide scope of the multipartner supply networks and to the high complexity of the dynamically occuring phenomena, is a difficult topic to teach. Conventional teaching approaches do not allow the students to sufficiently grasp neither the interrelationships between the elements of such a complex system nor the dynamic effects. SCM teaching has therefore a lot to gain from the use of learning-oriented virtual games. The XBeerGame is an immersive simulator enabling students to learn how to master the bullwhip effect through improved decision support, visibility, cooperation and agility. It can be calibrated by the teachers in order to get the students to learn by experience specific characteristics and behaviours of supply chains. The software technology used in the XBeerGame allows it to be used in a decentralized way and in particular with international student teams. The highly developed visual interface of the XBeerGame and the access to the game results favour its use for student tournaments and provide a large choice of pedagogical approaches. The XBeerGame has been used in teaching students at the Bachelor and Master levels as well as in continuous education in both North America and Europe. The pedagogical experience gained and the evaluations of these effective uses have led to several interesting conclusions as well as to further improvement proposals, for the tool itself as well as for the methodologies and pedagogical scenarios. This paper describes the key functionalities and characteristics of the XBeerGame. It then discusses its use in various teaching programs in Canada and in Switzerland. Based on these international hands-on experiences, the use of XBeerGame for SCM teaching is discussed. The tool itself is a point of discussion, but more importantly, the way it is integrated into a pedagogical scenario seems to be the key to an optimal use. It appears in particular that combing a discovery learning approach based on the XBeerGame with a more formal, mathematical description leads to interesting pedagogical results.

Information Control Problems in …, 2009

The Beer Game is a didactic tool to simulate information and material flows along a supply chain from a factory to a retailer. The continuous evolution of inter-organisation configurations is challenging such a traditional concept of supply chain. Concepts more "market-oriented" are necessary to describe scenarios in which manufacturers operate as nodes of a network of cooperative or competitive suppliers, customers, and other specialised service functions. The aim of this paper is to propose and evaluate a new didactic tool and simulation, based on the rules of the Beer Game. The extension is based on a simple network joining two supply chains. Risk management is also simulated in order to understand the strategies underlying the subject's behaviour in the face of risk within a means-end chain. This study describes the tests carried out on the original game, the variables that we proposed and the simulation results.

Simulation Conference, 2008. …, 2008

An Internet based supply chain simulation game (ISCS) is introduced and demonstrated in this paper. Different from other games and extended from the Beer Game, a comprehensive set of supply chain (SC) management strategies can be tested in the game, and these strategies can be evaluated and appraised based on the built-in Management Information System (MIS). The key functionalities of ISCS are designed to increase players' SC awareness, facilitate understanding on various SC strategies and challenges, foster collaboration between partners, and improve problem solving skills. It is concluded that an ISCS can be used as an efficient and effective teaching tool as well as a research tool in operations research and management science. Problems and obstacles have been observed while engaging in the SC business scenario game. The actions proposed and implemented to solve these problems have resulted in improved SC performance.