“Cola‐Game”: An Innovative Approach to Teaching Inventory Management in a Supply Chain

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article we present a game that can be used as a tool to educate students and managers on the issues in supply chain (SC), inventory management. The game has a bilevel demand with one level during regular times and another during sale times. The game could be played in two modes (independence and cooperation) and has been field tested in engineering and business classes. Players developed an appreciation for fluctuating demand and its impact on the costs and performance of a SC. They also learned the benefits and a monetary evaluation approach for cooperation. Our statistical analysis revealed that, as the game progressed, the performance of the teams improved. We present an integer linear programming (ILP) model to evaluate the performance of the teams. Because it is a post facto analysis, while the game is played without knowing the materialized retailer demand for the period, the ILP solution is not a tight lower bound on the total cost of the SC. However, it could be used to compare performance across teams. As an alternative, we also present a possible distribution of total SC costs that could be used as another reference without actually solving an ILP.