The Supply Net Game

The paper describes a game called, the supply net game, built around the structure of a production supply network based on the “anchoring and adjustment heuristic” which is known as the one people use to make inferences about uncertain events. The game involves four players where everyone manages his manufacturing unit that consists of four production lines which proceed to the joint development of products with the other units. While planning production and controlling inventories, every person should try to minimize the costs caused by both holding items on stock and being in an out-of stock situation. The paper stresses the valuable impact and contribution of management games for management and engineering education in general and particularly the significance of learning implicit skills as well as gaining insight in inventory control and management of complex distributed production systems such as the system dynamics production network model introduced and analyzed in the paper. The game will be used later in a controlled experiment which is not under the scope of this paper.