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Play the Beer Game – beat the Bullwhip Effect with our supply chain simulation

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Play in a safe
environment

What’s the Bullwhip Effect and why’s it costing you money? The Bullwhip Effect is all about excess inventory and lost sales opportunities.

The Skill Dynamics Beer Game can help you gain deep insights into the Bullwhip Effect, so that you can prevent stockouts and excess inventory in real life. And all within a safe simulation.

How to play the Beer Game

Our Beer Game is a virtual simulation. It’s similar to a game developed by MIT Professor Jay Forrester
in the 1960s to illustrate the dynamics of supply chains.

How many can play?

There are four players – the beer retailer, the wholesaler, the distributor and the manufacturer. It lasts an hour at most and simulates up to a year in the beer-distribution supply chain.

If any players are missing, AI bots can play their roles. You can even take part as a single player.

How does it work?

Each week, the retailer places a beer order with the wholesaler. They do the same with the distributor, and the distributor with the manufacturer.

Whatever your role, you must avoid running out of stock, while keeping inventory costs down and bringing the supply chain to equilibrium as quickly as possible.

Achieving equilibrium

You achieve equilibrium when each player reaches the target stock level and orders the same amount of beer each week for four consecutive weeks.

The Bullwhip Effect

The Beer Game was developed in the 1960s, but the term Bullwhip Effect was coined by Procter and Gamble in 1990.

They noticed that orders for diapers from distributors and wholesalers fluctuate significantly, even though demand for diapers hardly changed. You’ll experience something similar playing the Beer Game.

Let’s try a taste of the Beer Game.

Play the demo
Beer distribution game