“Hey, bro, I need 40 cases and you didn’t give me anything.”
“Why are you ordering so much stuff?”
“In a couple of months, I should be fine. But I’ve got a lot of inventory to move.”
Adriano Magnifico
Jeremie Kuypers, teacher in the applied business management program at the Arts and Technology Centre in LRSD, facilitates the Cola Wars supply chain challenge with his Grade 12 class.
“You need to be more consistent in your ordering. I’ve got a huge backlog.”
“You’re messing up the flow of orders.”
These students are playing a variation of the Beer Game, an interactive supply chain simulation developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, adapted into the Cola Wars Challenge for high school students.
The studentsThey are from the applied business management program, one of 13 applied and technical programs at the Louis Riel Arts and Technology Centre, and they’re desperately trying to suppress their panic-buying impulses.
These Grade 12s are learning the art of supply chain management in a game that seeks the delicate balance between having too much inventory and stocking out during product life cycles.
The game is simple to play but the learning is profound. Four-student teams take on the roles of manufacturer, distributor, wholesaler, and retailer as they manage cases of cola moving through an eight-foot-long game board based on weekly and fluctuating consumer demand.
ATC student Sharmeen Khan felt the real-life tensions of decisions within the game, noting “how complicated a supply chain is.”
Supply chains are impacted by a variety of factors including weather, tariffs, raw material shortages, politics, or war. The two-year pandemic has further strained those chains as companies and governments scrambled to meet demand for personal protective equipment (PPE), baby formula, toilet paper, bikes, blood, construction materials, and coffee.
Problem-solving is a key skill of any supply chain practitioner. Participant Grace Elendu said, “I loved the game. You think that you know what is about to happen, and a wrench gets thrown into it, and you must plan and adjust.”
ABM student Mujeeb Khan felt the frustration of a supply chain gone wrong. “We were all stuck in our roles – supply chains can’t operate this way.”
Effective supply chains are central to the movement of goods in a global economy and the industry needs savvy professionals to manage them. More and more universities and colleges are offering diplomas, degrees, and designations in this growing field that features many well-paying jobs.
Don Connolly, Manitoba area council chair for the CITT, an organization that delivers a supply chain designation to practitioners in the field, believes that students’ eyes are opened when “they understand the intricacies of an integrated supply chain system and the importance of strategic communication among the players within it.”
ATC’s cutting-edge applied business management program is available to all Grade 11 and 12 students in LRSD. Contact the instructor at [email protected] for more information.
Adriano Magnifico
St. Boniface community correspondent
Adriano Magnifico is a community correspondent for St. Boniface.
