Beer/Wine Game
Posted: Sat Apr 06, 2002 9:11 am
John Sterman schrieb:
> 1. we always tell people the game will run 50 weeks...
Right, thats what Ill do in future.
> 2. what were the incentives? we usually run the game with inventory
> costs of $0.50/case/week and backlog costs of $1.00/case/week.
We worked with 1Euro/crate.week for inventory and 2Euro/crate.week for
backlog.
> its important to make the incentives salient and to motivate people
> to pay attention to them so they try hard to minimize their team
> costs.
I think thats probably a crucial point that I didnt sufficiently
emphasise. My hope is that that would solve the problem of the order
fluctuations in the first few weeks.
> 3. Its also important to make the incentives and goals very clear
> in the briefing, and to get some competition going across the teams.
We didnt have the competitive element because all 5 groups were
involved in one single supply chain, making group decisions on ordering.
I also specifically said at the beginning that the aim was to reduce the
_total_costs_ of all links in the supply chain, which prompted some
altruistic behaviour, with groups trying to buffer their demand on other
groups. Would it be a good idea to offer incentive for the groups to
reduce their _individual_ costs by creating a pot which goes to the
group with least costs? On the other hand that would be unfair on the
manufacturer, who has the hardest job. Hm. Could it be that this is a
fundamental flaw in my way of running the game?
> 4. having base demand of 2 that changes to 4 means the integer
> constraint on order size may inhibit some ordering. we use 4
> changing to 8.
Oh. I had thought you used 2-4. Ill change that right away. What are
typically the highest orders you get? Ours never went above 10.
Thanks very much for the information.
Best wishes,
Niall Palfreyman.
From: Niall Palfreyman <niall.palfreyman@fh-weihenstephan.de>
> 1. we always tell people the game will run 50 weeks...
Right, thats what Ill do in future.
> 2. what were the incentives? we usually run the game with inventory
> costs of $0.50/case/week and backlog costs of $1.00/case/week.
We worked with 1Euro/crate.week for inventory and 2Euro/crate.week for
backlog.
> its important to make the incentives salient and to motivate people
> to pay attention to them so they try hard to minimize their team
> costs.
I think thats probably a crucial point that I didnt sufficiently
emphasise. My hope is that that would solve the problem of the order
fluctuations in the first few weeks.
> 3. Its also important to make the incentives and goals very clear
> in the briefing, and to get some competition going across the teams.
We didnt have the competitive element because all 5 groups were
involved in one single supply chain, making group decisions on ordering.
I also specifically said at the beginning that the aim was to reduce the
_total_costs_ of all links in the supply chain, which prompted some
altruistic behaviour, with groups trying to buffer their demand on other
groups. Would it be a good idea to offer incentive for the groups to
reduce their _individual_ costs by creating a pot which goes to the
group with least costs? On the other hand that would be unfair on the
manufacturer, who has the hardest job. Hm. Could it be that this is a
fundamental flaw in my way of running the game?
> 4. having base demand of 2 that changes to 4 means the integer
> constraint on order size may inhibit some ordering. we use 4
> changing to 8.
Oh. I had thought you used 2-4. Ill change that right away. What are
typically the highest orders you get? Ours never went above 10.
Thanks very much for the information.
Best wishes,
Niall Palfreyman.
From: Niall Palfreyman <niall.palfreyman@fh-weihenstephan.de>