December 2012

Responsive Learning Technologies .

EBeer: A Competitive Supply Chain Simulation

EBeer is an online simulation of a simple supply chain that manufactures and distributes cases of
beer. This online game extends a manual board game developed at MIT decades earlier.

Whereas actual supply chains can consist of complex networks of manufacturers, distributors,
wholesalers, and retailers, EBeer was created to provide insights into supply chain dynamics with
just a single manufacturer, a single distributor, a single wholesaler, and a single retailer. A team
consists of four players, with each player taking one of the four positions in the supply chain. The
retailer receives customer demand and fills demand by ordering cases from the wholesaler. The
wholesaler in turn orders cases from the distributor who in turn orders cases from the factory. The
factory meets orders by scheduling production.

The game is played in rounds, with each round representing one week. Each week, each player
observes his or her incoming order and then places an order to the next position upstream. The
factory observes its orders and schedules production. So each player makes one decision each
week. A game lasts between 30 and 50 rounds. Players must think fast. Except for the first two
week, players have 30 seconds to place their order each week. If a player doesnt place an order in
time, the default order is placed, which is the order that was received earlier that week.
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45 seconds

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The objective of the game is to meet customer demand while minimizing the cost of inventory
and stock outs. Team members only communicate by passing orders to each other. Verbal commu-
nication is considered cheating because such communication is much more difficult in a realistic
supply network. To further capture the difficulty of collecting remote information in complex
supply networks, each position of the chain can only see its own incoming orders and shipments
at the beginning of the week those orders and shipments arrive, and only its own inventory.

You must register yourself before the game begins. To register, go to the web address provided
by your instructor and click Register. Then enter the course code provided by your instructor
and click submit. You will then be asked to make up an ID and password. In the game, you will
be identified by your ID, not your name.

When your instructor starts the game, log in from the same web page using the ID and password
you registered earlier. Depending on how your instructor sets up the game, you may have to
select a competition specified by your instructor, or you may go straight to the online game board.
Once the game begins, you should see a board like the one on the last page of this handout. Each
round consists of the following events.
For the retailer, wholesaler, and distributor, the incoming shipment from the upstream station
is added to inventory. For the factory, completed production is added to inventory.
The next order is received by each player and filled from inventory. If a player does not have
enough inventory to fill the order, the unfilled portion becomes a backlog. A backlog is rep-
resented as negative inventory. In future rounds a player must fill its backlog before it can fill
the new order. Inventory to fill any backlog plus the incoming order becomes a shipment
either to the downstream station, or in the case of the retailer, to customers.
All shipments advance downstream and all previously placed orders advance upstream.
Each player decides how much to order (or in the case of the factory, how much to produce),
enters that number into the yellow box in their station on the game board, and clicks Sub-
mit. If a player is missing or doesnt enter a decision within the time limit, the station places
the default order, which equals that weeks incoming order.

The cost incurred by each player is displayed in the Results Summary box in the upper right
corner of the screen. At the end of each week, positive inventory incurs a holding cost of $0.50
per unit and negative inventory incurs a stockout cost of $1.00 per unit. The winning team is the
one that accumulates the lowest total cost over the entire game, for all four positions com-
bined. When the game ends, the Results Summary will show the entire teams score along with
a button to download the teams historic orders, inventory, and cost calculations.

Below the Results Summary are plots showing the histories of decisions and performance
parameters. Click on the different tabs to show the plots. You can use your cursor to zoom in on a
region of the plot or read the coordinates of a particular data point. Double click the plot to reset
it. If all the teams are playing the game together, there will also be a tab showing the current
scores of all the teams