The Kinaxis Supply Chain Game: Three Innovations to the Traditional Beer Game

I recently played the Kinaxis Supply Chain Game in my Operations Excellence class. The students loved it.

The Kinaxis game is an updated version of the classic Beer Game from MIT. It teaches the same lessons as the Beer Game but has three innovations that enhance its educational value.

Before the three innovations, I should mention that Kinaxis got the basics right. The Kinaxis game teaches supply chain coordination and the bullwhip effect; is online with a clean interface; and is built for four players.¹ And instead of Beer, this game makes cookies— which makes it more family-friendly!

Here are the three innovations, with the best saved for last.

First, the game has a live leaderboard. Students love the competition and seeing how they are doing in real time. It is more than just fun— when teams aren’t doing well, it can make them do things that make the bullwhip worse or start to blame other nodes. All good lessons that happen in real supply chains.

Second, all the teams play at the same pace with a timer. When I first heard about the timer, I was skeptical. Didn’t different teams need time to plan and strategize? However, I quickly came to like it. From the practical side, it keeps the class together by preventing some groups from taking forever to make decisions. But, more importantly, the timer helps simulate the pressure of the real world.

Third, and best, the game has a concurrent version. The students first played the standard version, which mirrors the original Beer Game. Then, after a discussion, the students played the concurrent version. In this version, there is no information lead time, and every node can see the status of every other node. This gives the students a chance to learn about the value of information sharing and how to collaborate better.

If you teach the Beer Game, I suggest you look at this game. The game is not self-service, but Kinaxis is working towards that. Kinaxis is committed to education with its academic program. I can imagine a lot of enhancements to the game over time.

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1. Some may remember that the Opex Analytics Beer Game was for a single player. This led to some complaints and disappointment. But, we were focused on reinforcement learning rather than replicating the Beer Game.