[pinky1417]

I played this game during orientation when I started my MBA at MIT Sloan (the game was originated at Sloan). In my second year, I facilitated the game.

The most eye-opening thing for me was that a good quarter of students were frustrated and surprised by the bullwhip effect. I'd guess the general population would be even less understanding of a bullwhip effect. I think that help explains why it seems so many people don't understand why it's difficult, even for the U.S. federal government, to create more supply of hand sanitizer, respirators, etc.

P.S. To be clear: I'm not suggesting the federal government isn't to blame for a lack of supply - we should have had a larger strategic reserve of pandemic mitigating supplies prior to the crisis, if only due to the risk of biological weapons (those preparations would have been just about as useful in a non-human-caused pandemic like COVID-19). Nor am I saying the government can't do more right now. The Beer Distribution Game merely helps partially demonstrate why manufacturers, suppliers, and the government (especially if they themselves understand the bullwhip effect!) don't instantly will pandemic supplies into existence.

[thechao]

The Wikipedia article only has a cursory overview, but I’m strongly reminded of the coordination issues I saw in software rasterizer pipelines, with respect to queuing, load-balancing, and buffering. A lot of novice engineers who approach parallel SW rasterization are surprised when they see production systems & the “buffers” between phases are “one deep” (say, 1024 samples; 128x16 vertices; etc). Explaining why this is both: 1. optimal; and, 2. the stated design goal, is always the first task when onboarding them. (Briefly: we size the phases so they’ve got soft real time guarantees, so that the pipeline is always “smooth”; in a SW rasterizer, you can never “get ahead”, so regardless of your buffering size, the buffer is always “empty” or “full”—never “in between”. Before starting work, you check if your downstream buffer is full, or if your upstream buffer is empty; if so: do something else! That sort of system can be modeled with a buffer of size==1!)

[hef19898]

It's the same for supply chain professionals.Not sure howyou played and facilitated it,but the versionI had had a first round with no communication. During which all teams, also those consisting of seasoned supply chain people, just fell victim to the bullwhip effect. everytime. Me to, and I knew the effect and the rules of the game.

A nasty thing, this bullwhip effect.

[Veedrac]

This doesn't actually demonstrate that it's difficult, just that it's expensive. If the government is willing to eat any sunk cost from oversupply, everything becomes predictable. In the case of COVID, it's hard to imagine any quantity of hand sanitizer and respirators doing more damage than the harm they prevent.

[Sherl]

>expensive

you deal those with scenario planning, which might be the sole responsibility of pandemic unit. We use casual loop diagrams to understand effects when math cant be drawn out on abstract problems.

Its insanely expensive to satisfy 99% populations requirement versus 95% of populations requirement but when that happens and if the consequence are severe we manage those supply chains with redundancy and the costs are absorbed with other players. Sure, it would profitable to operate without this but my understanding is when this sh*t hits everything falls.

$15 billion savings in 2018 resulted in $12 trillion being wiped out in two weeks.

>https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump...

>https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market...

[hef19898]

For one product, yes. For multiple product sharing resources it gets difficult as over production for one product might directly result in shortages for another.

Production hand sanitizer and masks and such is being ramped up, now that Chinese factories are slowly going back online. Things like that take some time, so.

[Scoundreller]

Heh, in my days working in a pharmacy (hybrid service & product world), it was amusing whenever prescribers (service-oriented) felt we could work harder to create stock.

Sure, I’ll just work a few extra hours to grow the crop of plants we extract this drug from.

Or build some more vats that we brew this drug in.

[CoffeeDregs]

Ha! Same here. Almost started an IAP session with Senge to let people play it multiple times (with varying demand curves) because it seemed to have a lot of exploration left...

[speleding]

Wow, I didn't realise there are so many Sloanies here. I attended a class where Jay Forrester himself came in to teach for a day (in 1998), in his eighties. Impressive man, yet so humble.

[CoffeeDregs]

Forrester came in to teach SysDyn (2004) and went over the wheel-of-real-estate. Eye-opening. Definitely a humble, nice guy.

Contract info is in my profile. Drop a line and we can grab 6-foot-distance coffee!

[pinky1417]

Same here. If any of y'all want to shoot the shit about Sloan, feel free to send me an email. I'm cooped up at home in South Florida and desperate for social interaction!

[speleding]

Wow, he must have been 85 by then. (Your contact info is a blank page for me?)

[im3w1l]

Hand sanitizer is a simple product. People could make it at home if you legalized moonshine.