The “Beer Game” is a well-known business game dealing with a chain of resources in a beverage distribution chain. We take it as the starting point and go on to an additional set of simulation environments which help to learn about ordering policies in particular and about policy design in general: “The Cantina”. The Cantina is an environment designed to help learning about decision policies for maintaining a resource stock according to plan.
There are two versions of the model, and each of them exists in two formats. “The Cantina Chain” proposes a beverage distribution chain with four stages (just like the “beer game”); there are differences, though: your goal is to maximize profit over 30 days, by ordering the adequate daily quantity of beverages. You have to pay a price when ordering, and when selling you’ll be paid a sales prices. If you run out of stock, the opportunity will be lost.
“The Cantina” is a smaller model, where the supply chain is hidden away; in this version, you can compare your performance to the one of a simulated references ordering policy.
Both versions are implemented as Vensim model (to be used with Vensim PLE or otherwise the Vensim Model Player) and as a Forio simulation. In the Vensim implementation, you can experiment with four typical ordering policies and take advantage of the full range of interactive simulation and model inspection tools. In the Forio version, you must take your ordering decisions on your own and cannot dig into the model.
This way you can use the Vensim implementation to analyze the logic, develop hypothesis and test them with the interactive simulation mode. When you believe to have designed a useful ordering policy, you can use the Forio implementation to try it out.
The Cantina Chain: http://forio.com/simulate/martin.schaffernicht/the-cantina-chain
The underlying models can be obtained by writing to me (and having VenSim PLE installed on your computer – you can download it for free at www.vensim.com)!
Martin F.G. Schaffernicht 