Hard to believe, but one of the classics of supply chain research is a board game! What’s more, its about beer! It is a simulation of a beer factory and its supply chain, all the way to the retailer and customer.
The interest in supply chains comes from the observation of the extreme volatility they exhibit. This has come to be called the Bullwhip Effect.
In a nutshell, very surprising swings in customer demand appear in even the most predictible products, Pampers, for example. You’d think B babies, P poops/day, U utility function (sometimes you resuse them so U=1.25, say) of the pamper would yeald a rock stedy daily demand of B*P/U. Nope. Wild swings in demand instead.
Our research consisted of reproducing the original Beergame in RePast, a java based simulation environment, and then tweaking it to look at visibility up and down the chain, and the impact of mesh chains rather than just a simple chain.
Some sources:
- Sorceforge Project Page
- SFI Extreme Workgroup
- SFI RFID Talk
- SFI Business Network Slides