The Use of Learning Labs for Inventory Control in Production Networks:
An Experiment with the Supply Net Game
Bernd Scholz-Reiter, Salima Delhoum
del@biba.uni-bremen.de
Department of Planning and Control of Production Systems
University of Bremen
The Supply Net game is built upon a pull production and logistic network and has, as a replenishment procedure, the "anchoring and adjustment heuristic" described as one of the heuristics people utilize to make inferences about uncertain events. Each of the four players that participate in this game manages the stock levels encompassed in his manufacturing unit by ordering for the four production lines consecutively in the same sequence from line one to four. At the same time, he tries to minimize the costs incurred. The minimization of costs corresponds to bringing the bullwhip effect to its smallest expression since the effect, defined as demand variability over a supply chain generates stacked backlogs when demand booms and huge inventories when orders fall; the two situations for which costs are high. It is hypothesized that the two types of costs, (a) € 0.5 per product on hand per minute and (b) € 1.0 for out-of-stock cost, are the same for all manufacturers. From another side when it is about the choice of a modeling methodology for the supply net game, system dynamics is adopted because it possesses a long tradition of contribution to the refinement of individual and organizational learning. Finally, the application is more than a mere gaming environment because it is designed to be part of a systems thinking intervention within a learning laboratory under the framework of a controlled experiment with performance measurements of subjects learning.
Figure 1. Top left: general structure of the production network
Bottom: policy diagram of the re-entrant structure for two coupled production lines
Top right: example of the player's interface
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