7.2.3 Features and options

The text contains detailed instructions regarding the game and how it should be played. We will not repeat these detailed descriptions, but will highlight some of the relevant points, and will guide you to play the game in such a way that some of the concepts we have studied so far will be reinforced. You should appreciate that you will need to spend some time playing the game to identify all options available and recognise how these can help you to understand the supply chain management related concepts.

Options. There are several options available to you which would determine the outcome of the game. The main game options:

You should familiarise yourself with these options and see how the game parameters would differ in each case.

Another option available to you for manipulating the outcome is the inventory policy option which allows you to select the inventory policy for each firm in the supply chain from a number of available policy options. Additionally, it is possible to manipulate the parameters for each inventory policy.

For example, you can select s,Q inventory policy for each firm and select the values of s and Q. Look at other inventory policy options and the way parameters can be manipulated. This is a powerful tool to demonstrate the effects of different inventory policies on the overall supply chain performance.

The other option with which you can manipulate the outcome is the demand option . This allows you to set the pattern of demand faced by the retailer. You can set the demand as a deterministic, fixed demand or a fluctuation demand with a mean and standard deviation. This option provides the flexibility to see how variations faced by the retailer affect order patters of upstream firms.

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