The Beer Game! A Hands-On Supply Chain Simulation

Meeting Timeline:

5:30-6:00pm - Registration, Team Assignments, Food

6:00-8:00pm - The Beer Game, led by Ginny Youngblood, CPIM, CSCP, CBPA

8:00-8:15pm - Wrap Up

About The Beer Game:

The beer distribution game (also known as the beer game) is an experiential learning business simulation game created by a group of professors at MIT Sloan School of Management in early 1960s to demonstrate a number of key principles of supply chain management. The game is played by teams of at least four players, often in heated competition, and takes at least one hour to complete. A debriefing session of roughly equivalent length typically follows to review the results of each team and discuss the lessons involved.

The purpose of the game is to understand the distribution side dynamics of a multi-echelon supply chain used to distribute a single item, in this case, cases of beer. The object of the game is to meet customer demand for cases of beer through the distribution side of a multi-stage supply chain with minimal expenditure on back orders and inventory. The team or supply chain that achieves the lowest total costs wins. The game is used to illustrate one of the links between System Dynamics theory and the Feedback Control Theory which inspired it - that systems with negative feedback loops and time delays can lead to oscillation and overload, a pattern of behavior observed in many real-world systems.