The Supply Chain Academy (SCA) recently held a successful ‘supply chain simulation’ game for niche wine and beer company; Majestic Wine.

Neil Firth, Majestic Wine’s Supply Chain Director, wanted his team to understand what the ’end-to-end’ supply chain for Majestic looked like, so they could be prepared for the day-to-day challenges they will face while maintaining exceptional customer service. To deliver this, Neil selected and partnered with the Supply Chain Academy because of our approach to delivering bespoke, practical training. SCA introduced him to an advanced version of ‘The Beer Game’ led by our expert facilitators.

The Beer Game (or beer distribution game) was originally invented in the 1960’s by Jay Forrester at MIT, as a result of his work on system dynamics. It is a roleplay simulation game that lets participants experience the potential problems of traditional supply chains. This competitive business simulation game demonstrates the need for coordination throughout the supply chain.

Neil Firth commented, “I wanted training that was different yet educational, to get my team to think and be prepared for any supply chain scenario. We worked with the Supply Chain Academy to develop a bespoke version of the beer game to help them understand what happens across the supply chain. It was a well-run event that the team learnt a lot from”.

The simulation is a powerful tool for ensuring people from different functional areas (sales, marketing, finance, manufacturing, procurement, customer service, warehouse, distribution etc) acquire a common understanding of how much the supply chain (and business costs) can be affected by such things as lead times, customer demand fluctuations, out of stocks, supplier behaviour and supply fluctuations.

Read the full case study here.

The Supply Chain Academy can deliver efficiency in your global supply chain. If you would like more information on ‘The Beer Game’ or any of our other products, please email info@supplychainacademy.org.uk or call 01708 259450.

The Supply Chain Academy is part of the Uniserve Group. For further information about Uniserve’s international services and supply chain solutions, please email info@ugroup.co.uk or call 01708 259400.